Forewarned is Forearmed
by Sheyrena Wyrsabane
Summary: Girl falls into a video game universe. I know, but it's all in good fun. She arrives just before the Wutai War and attempts to make happy endings for the interesting and/or attractive residents of Gaia. Fortunately, her criteria excludes Hojo. Twice.
1. Arrival

Eve had never put much stock in the old cliché "be careful what you wish for."

Possibly that oversight should be put up for review.

"Excuse me, I think the dehydration is going to my head. What did you say you sell here?"

The shopkeeper—and he deserved the name; if ever there was a place that earned the term "mom and pop" store, this was it—eyed her warily. Well, to be honest, more warily. She obviously hadn't scored many points tripping over the doorjamb, covered in dirt, face streaked with sweaty grime, and one shoe missing.

"This is a materia shop, miss," he replied gruffly.

So she hadn't misheard. And the shelves of faintly glowing orbs might also have been a clue.

"Huh."

"If you're not going to buy anything…" the man behind the counter began delicately.

"Wait, where am I again?"

This time, he sighed audibly. "A materia shop, miss," he repeated.

"No, I mean what city am I in?" Eve tried a smile. "I've been walking for awhile, and I'm a little lost."

"You're in Corel," he said, a distinct undertone of what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you in his voice.

"Oh. Okay." Finally taking the hint, Eve turned and left the little shop. She barely made it past the door before her knees gave out. Corel.

This was a terrible dream. Looking out over the little mining village, bustling with life and, if not exactly thriving, exuding a sense of community and, well, not-everyone-has-died-ness, then imagining the aftermath of Scarlet's little hissy fit…

And all of this reflection was not improving her situation. She was starving, thirsty, blistered, and disgusting. Oh, and tired. Whether this was a bizarre dream or an even more bizarre alignment of parallel universes or whatever, her physical discomfort wasn't going to solve itself (well, if it were a dream, eventually it would, but…no point in suffering in the meantime. Besides, if this was a dream, she'd only look like an idiot in the privacy of her own head, as opposed to sitting around starving to death in front of the whole town because she was convinced she might wake up).

"Okay, think," she said aloud, drawing the attention of a few lonely souls lounging around outside the shacks. "If I were lost and alone in Final Fantasy VII, where would I go for help?"


	2. Vincent Valentine

In retrospect, 'I think Nibelheim is somewhere west of here' was probably not the best way to start out this journey. On the premise that there was always random useful stuff lying around in towns—that turned out not to be true—Eve had wandered around Corel for a bit looking for, well, anything. She did find a broken stick that had probably been the handle of a shovel in a past life that was currently serving as a weapon/walking stick, and had managed to steal a blanket and some food from one of the empty shacks. She assuaged her conscience with the fact that it was the largest of the shacks, and besides she hadn't taken _all_ of it.

The shoe thing was really a problem though.

She'd lost the first in the initial, frantic trip to Corel, when she'd woken from a sound sleep to find herself in the middle of a totally unfamiliar field, with nothing but the clothes on her back and no memory of how she'd gotten there. She'd gotten her foot stuck in some sort of hidden ravine and the shoe had dropped into the crevice, just out of arm's reach and with no convenient sticks to reach down and grab it.

Eve looked dumbly at the stick she was currently carrying.

"Dammit," she said aloud, mostly just to break the silence.

Well, probably not worth it to go all the way back now. She grimaced as yet another sharp stone poked into the sole of her foot. Probably.

She'd eventually ditched the other shoe as well, as it was just too weird to walk around with only one shoe, and had stupidly abandoned it somewhere instead of just carrying it along. That shoe constituted, hmm, a quarter of her possessions, if you counted all the food as one.

And "all the food" was swiftly coming to resemble "one" in more than just mathematically convenient ways.

Eve wasn't completely stupid. Arguably. She'd been camping before and knew that moving water was better than still to drink, the early symptoms of hypothermia and which side of a tree moss grew on. None of this did a thing to help her find food in a—for lack of a better word—alien environment. If the materia shop hadn't been enough to convince her, the unfamiliar wildlife would have. She was no scientist, but she was pretty sure that there were no giant sea-green trees or animals that were some crazy cross between Russian nesting dolls and a possessed Easter egg.

And that egg thing just hadn't seemed so weird in-game as it did when she was running away from it. Fortunately, Possessed-Russian-Egg monsters didn't run well (sadly that was not assumed, despite it having no legs or appendages of any kind) and she was able to cower in some scrub until it got bored and wandered away.

Also fortunately, running away in reality was much easier than gameplay implied. The monsters genuinely seemed to have no interest in chasing, entirely unlike her—admittedly limited—prior experience with predatory animals. So far, her broken shovel had seen little use, and she hoped to keep it that way.

But that did not help her to find food. None of the foliage looked like any edible plant she knew, and some of it attacked if one got too near. Even if she had any idea how to go about converting an animal into something edible, they were all either too dangerous or too quick for her to capture, and besides which she had nothing like a knife and was pretty confident she couldn't tear it apart with her bare hands.

Converting from video game map to actual miles walked was, well, impossible, but she was sure that, the way things were now, her chances of surviving a walk to Nibelheim were pretty much zero.

"And I didn't even bother to ask what year it is!" she ranted to the sky. "Of course, it would have been a bit weird to ask, say, how old Sephiroth is, or if ShinRa still exists, but still! Now I'm lost in the wilderness with no timeline beyond Meteor not currently pending and the battle between Omega and Chaos has probably not happened yet." After all, there didn't _seem_ to be a giant meteor and/or corpse floating in the sky. But for all she knew ShinRa didn't even exist yet!

"It's going to really suck if I do somehow make it to Nibelheim and it's crawling with scientists," she grumbled, stepping gingerly around some sort of weird dirt mound. "And I really want some shoes."

She squeaked in an embarrassingly girly manner and fell on her butt when something that looked a bit like a squirrel popped out of the ground.

"Er," she said.

It chittered.

Never one to let pride get in the way of prudence, Eve began crawling backward, using her elbows to put some distance between herself and the…ground squirrel (and wasn't that actually a real thing?) without taking her eyes off it. She'd taken more than enough bruises, scratches, and general roughing up from the local wildlife—including the plants!—to have developed a healthy wariness.

Apparently she wasn't moving fast enough. The ground squirrel—and the way it's tail stuck up like that was starting to look vaguely familiar—reared up in an unmistakably threatening way. However, instead of launching itself at her with its teeth bared or whatever, a weird glow began gathering around it.

Well that _definitely_ was not a positive development. She flipped over and pushed herself to her feet, flat out running away from the ground squirrel. She turned to look over her shoulder at it just as a wave of color struck her. A very peculiar sensation overcame her, and she closed her eyes and covered her head like that could possibly make a bit of difference.

After a few moments in which nothing at all happened, she opened her eyes again. All her limbs seemed to be in place. She was not frozen or on fire or standing in a very small lake. She was not obviously poisoned, or abnormally slow, or particularly angry (how would Fury manifest itself in real life anyway?). She was also not a frog.

She did, however, appear to be in a different place, not that that was anything new. It looked to be a forest of some kind, filled with unfamiliar trees. Also, instead of a squirrel, she was now faced with some sort of giant worm thing.

"Fantastic. Because being lost in the Corel desert is definitely a part of the game I wish to experience in real life. The tree thing is cute, but I've seen Dune, and I know about unnaturally sized worms," she complained. The worm didn't respond. Sadly, she'd half expected it to. And now that she thought about it, the worm was bigger than your average worm, but no bigger than, say, a large dog, and she was pretty sure the ones in Corel towered over people. Not that it was such an accomplishment to tower over Cloud. Also, that worm had looked, well, monstrous, while this one mostly just looked like an ordinary caterpillar, except that it was big enough to munch comfortably on a tree.

Eve started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"I'm going to make the executive decision that that was not a Mu, and that glowy stuff was not L4 suicide, and I do not have the worst luck on the planet. I guess it's Planet now. And I guess the worst luck would be if my level were a multiple of four. Does that whole level concept translate at all?"

The caterpillar, untroubled by her rambling, continued to munch through what was now obviously a vastly oversized blade of grass.

"Hmm. Well, Mini doesn't seem to be quite as inconvenient as I had anticipated," Eve mused. "I seem to have escaped the Mu. I can just hide here in the grass. And I'm pretty sure this is one of those conditions that wears off after a battle." She reflected for a moment. "However that line may be drawn, and if that wasn't just an in-game convenience. You know, there really has to be a better method than trial-and-error to determine what concepts do and do not translate. Though that whole randomness factor does tend to support the theory that this is not, in fact, a dream."

She took stock of her situation. The food had shrunk as well, so she still had it, which was good, but if it had stayed large, there would have been more, which would have been better. Proportionately. Maybe. Also, she was now so small that the rocks were not nearly as painful under her feet. Bonus. Was that a weight thing? Like ants carrying boulders? Not important.

Adjusting the bundle she'd made from the blanket on her shoulder, she faced towards what she was (about 25%) sure was west. And realized that her journey to Nibelheim had just become exponentially longer.

"Goddamnit."

Okay, being Mini _sucked_.

It had been about four days now and Eve had long since given up on some sort of post-battle miracle. She estimated that she'd traveled no more than a few yards (though it was less "estimated" and more "guessed wildly"). Her attempts to channel Dune and somehow harness the caterpillar had been totally unsuccessful, as it just sat there eating. She'd also come across some sort of stream, and discovered that she unfortunately was not light enough to walk on the water. That would have been almost cool enough to make up for all the various inconveniences.

She was sitting around feeling sorry for herself when careful scrutiny of the surrounding forest revealed that it looked just a bit thinner to her left. That was not where she'd decided was west, but since she was guessing more than a little on that score anyway, she wasn't too concerned. Hopping off her rock perch, she pushed past a few more trees/grass stems/whatever to reveal a wide, brownish plain as far as she could see in all directions.

"Huh."

Maybe it was a river of quicksand?

She put a foot tentatively on the dirt. Nothing bad happened. She cautiously shifted her weight to that foot. Still nothing. Slowly, she eased her other foot out of the grass and onto the dirt…

POP

…and found herself face-planting into the dirt.

"Ergh."

Shaking herself a bit, she glanced around and saw that the "vast plain" was now, unmistakably, a road. Glancing behind her, she confirmed that the "forest" had resumed its previous identity as a grassland.

"Okay, so either approaching a man-made thing causes that to wear off, or that was just the biggest coincidence of all time."

A sudden, familiar sound met her ears—the rumbling of an engine.

Eve immediately concentrated on an image of a car driving away from her location, just in case karma was watching and took a malicious pleasure out of crushing her dreams. It must have worked, because after a few minutes a truck came into view, heading in her direction.

Making sure she was in the exact middle of the road, Eve jumped up and down and waved her arms in a manner completely free of dignity. Whatever, she was desperate. And her definition of that word had altered significantly in the time she'd been in…Planet? Gaia? What did the inhabitants call this place anyway?

Fortunately, her potential rescuers at least met the standard of people-who-would-not-run-down-a-girl-even-if-she's-clearly-blocking-the-road-and-a-complete-wreck. A few of her timeline questions were answered when the passenger side opened and someone stepped out, dressed in what was unmistakably a ShinRa trooper uniform. The three-eyed helmet and baggy, bright blue pants looked just as ridiculous in reality as they'd looked in the game.

"What are you doing out here?" the person—she was pretty sure it was a guy—asked. Did ShinRa allow women into the SOLDIER program?

"Please, I'm lost," Eve said, pleading shamelessly. She tried to look pitiful. It wasn't too hard.

Luck seemed to be with her for once, as his stance relaxed slightly. "Where are you trying to get?"

Now, this presented a dilemma. "Well," she began, trying not to sound like she was about to start lying through her teeth, "I was going visit my…father. He's in Nibelheim."

It was hard to tell, because of the helmet, but she thought the guy might be staring. "Nibelheim?" he asked, and the incredulity in his voice further supported the "staring" theory. "You're a long way out of your way."

"Um, yes. See, I was riding a chocobo, but then I wasn't paying close enough attention and when it went over a river I lost my balance and I fell. I was going to get the chocobo back, but I was attacked by a Mu and it Mini-ed me and I've just been wandering for a few days." There. Best to throw in a few real details.

The guy's posture did not suggest that he was convinced. "Where's your chocobo now?"

"Oh…um, I think it was eaten by a tree. I mean, you know, one of those plant things in the forest that look a bit like trees. You know, the, uh, Mandragors?" Shit, that's from Harry Potter.

Impossibly, this seemed to convince the guy. "Oh you mean the Mandragora? Yeah, they can be tough. You shouldn't be out here by yourself."

Now, normally Eve would have been extremely irritated by (a) JK Rowling's total lack of originality and (b) being treated as helpless because she was a girl, but she didn't hold those philosophies so dear as to turn down desperately needed aid.

Pulling her shoulders in slightly, she ducked her head and began digging a little hole in the dirt with her foot. Hopefully, she looked about five. "I know, I just miss my dad so much!" she sniffled a bit, and tried to force some tears. Actually, this whole display was bringing up the whole lost-everyone-she'd-ever-known angle of this little venture that she was determinedly trying to ignore.

And, blessedly, it worked like a charm. The guy took his helmet off, revealing him to be probably younger than her and obviously out of his element when faced with a crying woman.

"Well," he began, awkwardly patting her shoulder, "we're not going to Nibelheim, but we are going to base, and they sometimes have supply trains headed that way. We'll see what we can arrange for you, Miss…?"

Eve's whole brain immediately went blank, then kick-started again in frantic circles. She'd apparently lucked out on the language issue, but she had no history in this world at all, no known identity, and her name would probably (well, maybe not, because, you know, _Rufus_) sound weird to these people. She was surprised when what came out of her mouth was "…Tifa."

"Tifa?" the trooper asked.

Oh great. This is _definitely_ going to come back and bite me in the ass. "Yes. Tifa Lockhart. My dad's the mayor?" she prompted.

"Oh. I'm sorry Miss Lockhart, I've never been to Nibelheim," thank god, "but I'll make sure you see your father again soon."

She managed a smile, the tenuousness of which he hopefully attributed to her difficult journey, and followed him to the back of the truck.

"I'm Ned, by the way," he informed her, pulling open the doors in the rear of the truck. Obviously, this was one of those passenger-transport type trucks. Or she was in for a very uncomfortable trip.

"Hi, Ned. Thank you for saving me," she added; no reason not to get as much as possible about of this turn of fortune.

He gave her a hand into the back, where several troopers were lounging against the benches lining the sides, some wearing their helmets and some not. One particular soldier was wearing an eye-watering shade of purple, and when he turned his head…

She gasped, unable to help herself. His eyes—they were glowing! Even knowing that it was a possibility, she hadn't grasped just how…odd it would look, for a person's eyes to be _glowing_ like that.

And now everyone was staring. Well, when something works…

"Wow!" she gushed, trying to sound as stupid and fangirl-y as possible. "I've never met a real SOLDIER before!" She bounded over and into his personal space, staring in what was no doubt a very annoying manner. In her peripheral vision, she could see everyone go back to their business, which was mostly staring at the walls, with only a few eyerolls in response to her continuing presence. Awesome. She mentally took back all—okay, most; well, maybe some—of the bad things she'd ever said about the uselessness and dependency of all the women in Final Fantasy.

Ned, sounding a bit put out, announced generally that she was "a bit lost and getting a ride back to base with us" and closed the door again.

The SOLDIER grinned and winked, causing a sudden swamp of panic that this might possibly be _Zack_ and then what was she going to do…but eventually her brain caught up with her and said that this man had light brown hair and brown eyes and was sitting quietly instead of doing squats and hadn't glomped anyone in the thirty seconds she'd known him and so probably was not Zack.

She slumped into an open space on the bench and attempted to think of something to say that wouldn't out her as an alien or an idiot or a huge liar, but the decision was taken from her when she almost immediately fell deeply asleep.

Eve stayed at the ShinRa base for two weeks. It was more terrifying than any monster encounter she'd faced so far, or the realization that she might be tiny forever, or even the time a sudden storm had struck and she'd had no shelter at all, huddling in her blanket as the icy rain slowly numbed her limbs and face as she struggled to just keep walking, in case she fell asleep and never woke up again.

It's not that anyone was mean to her; in fact, they were all surprisingly polite, given that she had no legitimate reason to be there whatsoever. And it's not like the base was populated by mad scientists; they only had two medics who weren't even real doctors. But she knew that they could easily disprove her story with a simple PHS call, and anytime she opened her mouth she was terrified something inconsistent with the laws of this world would come out and they would know she was an imposter. ShinRa wasn't known to be understanding, and she so wasn't looking forward to getting up close and personal with the Turks. They were pretty damn scary when they thought you were hiding something from them. And the rest of the time, too.

Bottom line, she lived in constant fear. She hid in her room and avoided everyone as much as possible, and fortunately for her blood pressure a transport was bound for Nibelheim only two short weeks after her arrival.

It was less a "transport" and more "a guy in a cart," but he let her sit on one of the bags of cloth, and provided trail rations even though she had no money at all, so all things considered he was one of her top ten favorite people ever.

The journey to Nibelheim was long enough that she individually thanked ever person, deity, summon and enemy type she could recall from this universe that the ShinRa troops had come along and saved her from going the whole way on foot. Or, more accurately, saved her from dying alone in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, she also had loads of time to think about her situation. It was now pretty clear that this was not just a dream. Even with the weird way time passed in dreams, there was way too much going on here to be compressed into a normal night's sleep. That left her with a few possibilities. Either she was in a coma, she was insane and hallucinating, or she was really here. As to the first two, nothing she'd done so far had "snapped her out of it" as it were, so they were increasingly less likely. On the other hand, that last possibility was insane. And, whatever the "reality" of her situation, at least to her perception she was now irrevocably separated from everyone and everything she had ever known.

Her life hadn't been terribly significant or exciting—menial cubicle job, no romantic prospects, little social life, small family—but it had still been _her life_, and even if her circle of close friends and family was small, it was still important to her. She might never see her parents again, and though upon reflection she had been almost impossibly lucky so far, the whole situation made her really want a hug from her mom and an assurance that everything would be okay.

But—and she chose not to dwell on how truly pathetic this logic train was—she'd read in fanfic that the best way to recover from a traumatic loss was to live for those you'd lost, and make them proud of what you do with the time you have left. She was pretty sure it had been Barrett who supposedly said that, which seemed somewhat out of character, but logically the characters must have more to them than an ability to kick ass and a tragic past. Except maybe Cloud. And since she apparently _was_ in a fanfic, those were the best standards to apply.

So she allowed herself the trip to Nibelheim to mourn her family, friends, life and planet, and to accustom herself to the idea of doing something seriously awesome with her life so they could hear about it all the way from whatever other dimension her past existed in. Fortunately, Gaia was a place ripe for the doing of awesome things.

Judicious questioning of her companion told her that she had lucked out in her placement in the timeline. More or less. She was too late to save Vincent, Lucrecia, Gast, Ifalna…she hurried past that depressing list…but Sephiroth was still young-ish and not evil. Apparently, the war with Wutai hadn't even happened yet. If she wasn't worried about being caught, Eve would have just sat down and made a list of everything bad that had ever happened to anyone and what she could potentially do to stop it. However, that would be monumentally stupid, and in any case she was an obsessed fan but simply didn't know everything about everything, and dates especially were very vague. Like she knew that Zack died five years after Nibelheim burning, but not when the burning happened! It was even possible that Gast or Ifalna were actually still alive, but what could she do? They were in hiding somewhere, so she couldn't exactly call them, and she thought it might be Modeoheim but wasn't that also somewhere of significance in Crisis Core, when Gast would have already been dead? So maybe she was getting mixed up?

All in all, the amount of time she had to let her thoughts run in circles on that long journey made Vincent's thirty-year mope-fest seem _even more insane_. He should count himself lucky that she was going to wake him up early.

Almost supernatural luck, Eve reflected as she ran, had an unfortunate tendency of running out on you. She'd arrived in Nibelheim without incident—to be greeted by the Mayor and his young daughter. She barely had time to estimate Tifa's age before jumping out of the cart and taking off, choosing to risk looking suspicious in order to avoid being confirmed as suspicious.

This was remarkably like her situation when she first arrived, though she had a few days' worth of food this time and at least knew where she was. Her pursuers, however, were human and not some dumb monsters. Furthermore, her memory of Nibelheim's layout was sketchy at best, as she'd mostly slept through the Sephiroth flashback after you stopped being able to watch him kill dragons in two hits.

Given that she was about to run out of town, however, this was apparently not the right direction. In the absence of any better ideas, Eve abruptly spun ninety degrees and began running up the side of the nearest mountain. Even though she was in much better shape now than she'd ever been, she was soon gasping and wheezing, but she forced herself up in an effort to get out of the "safe zone." Wasn't Tifa the guide because the villagers were afraid of the mountains? Oh wait, maybe that was just the bridge? Well, this could end badly…

Whatever the reason—monsters, superstition, sheer laziness—her pursuers eventually broke off and Eve cowered behind a boulder, desperately trying to regain her breath and resting her trembling legs. So. She was in Nibelheim—more or less—and while she was not welcome in the town, it should be easy enough to creep around until she found the Mansion. Provided she didn't trip over one of those dragons, given her Sephiroth-free state.

The thought of monsters reminded her that reaching ShinRa Mansion was hardly the equivalent of rescuing Vincent. The place was crawling with difficult monsters, and after getting shown up by a squirrel that didn't bode well for her. She'd even lost her shovel handle, unable to explain to the troopers on base why she wanted that piece of junk. She forgave them when they dug some shoes and un-ripped clothes out of storage somewhere. But new shoes wouldn't impress one of those swinging candelabra monsters. And that wasn't even _considering_ the Lost Number. She didn't have the faintest idea how to use materia, even if she could somehow acquire some. Plus, enormous and powerful monster.

"Okay Eve," she told herself bracingly, "stop thinking like this is a video game. It's an ancient, rundown old mansion. Somewhere there's got to be a broken window or collapsing wall or _something_.

She contemplated staying behind the boulder until the next morning or at least until no one was plausibly still hunting for her, but the overcast sky deciding to start dropping snow on her head changed that idea. She'd spent one night pinching herself awake, terrified of hypothermia, and it was an experience she hoped never to repeat. Besides, she had to be sneaky if she wanted to avoid the mako-mad monsters and dragons and Nibel wolves and whatever the hell else lived in these mountains.

It was snowing in earnest by the time she found the Mansion. Her hands and feet were numb with cold, and she couldn't feel most of her face. It had taken much longer than she'd anticipated to get here, especially when she found herself on the edge of a cliff and had to backtrack. The drifts were now too high for her to get a good idea of the broken-basement-window situation, and she was getting a little too close to a repeat of the terror-of-hypothermia incident.

"Well," she said uneasily, addressing the Mansion for lack of a more appropriate target. "Random encounters means there probably isn't a monster everywhere in the whole Mansion. I mean, if you killed as many things in real life as you do in the game, no one would be able to move for the corpses. So, theoretically, there should be somewhere in this place that's monster-free. Right?"

She took the wind howling through the eaves as agreement.

"Okay then Mansion, I'm counting on you to stick to your word."

She crept around the house, peering in first floor windows. She finally located one that opened into a small room with a fireplace, dusty furniture, and nothing else. The window was intact, but unlocked, and she was able to force it open just enough to shimmy through.

While the room was blessedly snow (and monster) free, it was still horribly cold and very dark. Her teeth chattering, Eve rubbed some life back into her hands and began taking stock of the contents of the room. Using the last dim light from outside and her still mostly numb hands, she established that there was nothing blanket-like in the room, only two musty throw pillows, but that most of the furniture was made of wood, and the fireplace seemed functional.

"Well," she said aloud, the uncertainty clear in her voice, "people have been making fire since before the wheel or society or hygiene, so I can probably figure it out."

It was better than sitting there freezing to death, so she began methodically disassembling the furniture, taking little breaks to vigorously rub her hands and feet, and trying to keep the entire process as quiet as possible. That closed door might not keep out some of the more intelligent—or large—monsters.

Using her teeth and fingers, she also took apart the pillows, laying out a few little piles of the drier looking cotton-type stuff and some the cloth that made up the case to use for kindling. She attempted a little teepee of chair legs and other wood she'd collected, and concluded that this fire had next to no chance of getting started. Nevertheless, she set to rubbing two sticks together, attempting to generate a spark. At least it would keep her hands warm for awhile.

She had no way to keep track of time, but it seemed hours later. Her shoulders were one solid ache, and she'd worn a soft spot in the wood where her hands rested. It was now pitch black, and she was just about ready to give up. She'd had a few sparks that didn't make it to the kindling, and one false start where the kindling thought about catching but then selfishly smothered itself instead.

She'd also put some serious to thought to how stupid it was to essentially broadcast her presence to everyone in the vicinity, though that provided a little comfort in the face of the very real possibility that she might freeze to death in here tonight. She could really come to hate this place.

Just to spite her in her growing despair, a spark chose that moment to flare to life, landing right in the kindling and beginning to glow softly.

Eve crossed all her fingers and started running down the list of deities she knew in this world again as she knelt and carefully, gently, blew on the little glow. It flickered, faltered, and she held her breath.

And then, a tiny flame appeared.

"Yes!" she shouted, probably attracting every monster in the Mansion and nearly blowing out her infant fire besides. Choosing to ignore the monster situation, as there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, she concentrated on coaxing the little flame on to bigger and better things. She carefully shredded more cotton as it burned through what was already there, making sure not to smother it. She continued this process for a long time, the light comforting her and warming her fingers a bit but not otherwise all that helpful. She was afraid that the fire just wasn't hot enough for the bigger stuff she had around it.

But her persistence was rewarded and the fire began to lick up first one chair leg, then a rod from the back of another, until her whole little teepee was alight. She restrained her celebration to a fist pump this time, and hurriedly fetched all the more log-like wood she'd collected in the admittedly distant hope of success.

When the fire was blazing merrily around three logs and she'd found a suitably long and solid stick that she wrapped a piece of her much worn blanket around to use as a potential weapon, she curled up as close to the fire as she dared and closed her eyes. Sure, only idiots left an active fire unattended, but it was in a fireplace, and she was so tired…

Luck was with her again because the only consequence of her unwatched fire was that it went out. The cold woke her, and several frantic minutes of blowing on the coals and half-remembered instructions from Little House on the Prairie books got a little flame going again. Not until the fire was back up to log-eating levels did she sit back and relax.

"I'm like that kid from Hatchet," she told the fire. "In mastering fire, I have created life for myself. Or something. I haven't read that book in forever. Now he survived alone with no food. Didn't he make traps for animals somehow? Though obviously he had a hatchet, which would have been way more useful than my broken shovel, which I don't even have anymore."

Now that she had the attention to spare for her surroundings beyond the state of her fire, she noticed that it was apparently day time, as faint light streamed in through the grimy window. It also appeared to have stopped snowing, and the air was slightly warmer. Time to go poke a sleeping dragon—er, Turk.

This time, she kept an appropriate degree of respect for her fire. She ventured out the window with one of her dwindling supply of logs and used it to dig through the snow drifts, looking for entry into the basement that did not involve a key in a safe and an improbable monster. When she started to lose her grip on the stick because her hands were so cold, she went back and took care of her fire. Her progress was painfully slow, and as her supply of wood got lower and lower the possibility of this plan failing increasingly intruded on her consciousness. She didn't have a Plan B. She was in a remote and inaccessible mountain town whose inhabitants probably thought she was some sort of criminal—not undeservedly—and the next best help was all the way in Midgar, which might as well be the moon at this point.

She seemed to have one last bit of luck left, however, as her questing log at long last hit something that wasn't foundation, but glass. She dropped to her knees and dug the window out frantically, unwisely using her bare hands to move the snow. The window was tiny. However, given her recent trend toward near-starvation, there was a (slight) possibility that she could squeeze through. Standing up, she raised her stick and brought it sharply down on the glass.

It was like hitting a fencepost with a baseball bat.

"Ow, ow, ow," she half-sang, clutching her hands to her sides as the aftershocks traveled up and down her arms. Highly discouraged, she sat on her ass in the snow, which was immediately revealed as foolish when cold wetness began seeping into the seat of her pants.

"Okay, think," she told herself. "How do people break into windows?"

Pulling solely from her personal experience, she drew a complete blank.

"Wait, I think I saw this on NCIS. Or CSI. Something. Cops like to use their elbows."

She eyed the window, then the log that had failed utterly at denting it. She looked at her elbow.

"Yeah, there's probably a trick to that. Some people use diamonds or something, but I don't have any of those. Ditto lockpicks, nail files and whatever else stealthy folk use. Oh! Kids throw rocks at windows, right? And kids, probably about the same break-in skill level as me?"

It was ridiculously difficult to find a rock, considering she was _on a mountain_. The first one was oddly round, almost like a ball. A few (more cautious) bangs on the window yielded nothing, though at least her whole body wasn't vibrating in aftershock. She resumed hunting, this time for a pointy rock. Either it would make a difference, or she would assume the window was meant to be experiment-proof and try stealing an axe or something.

She was becoming quite the criminal.

Pointy rock found, she attacked the window again. It didn't shatter into a thousand pieces, but the second hit yielded a faint trace of what might eventually be a crack, so she kept at it until the glass finally gave up and broke. It took even more time to clear away all the visible glass from the edges—it would be a tight fit after all—and by then it was past time to return to her fire.

She regarded the window. It wouldn't go anywhere, and perhaps it was best to let any monsters roused by the ruckus go back to whatever it was monsters did when they weren't getting killed by adventurers or devouring stupid girls. Besides, if she burned the Mansion down with her untended fire, it would make retrieving Vincent more difficult.

The whole time she sat by the fire, warming up and waiting for it to go out, she fretted about what Vincent might do or say. Worst case (and most likely) scenario, he ignored her and refused to leave his coffin. She would have to think up some brilliant story to get him out, preferably with lots of Lucrecia and Sephiroth in distress and Hojo being evil, without in any way implying that she knew more than she ought about top secret projects.

That could be a challenge.

Finally, the fire was down to embers that she decided weren't dangerous, and at the last minute she wrapped her entire blanket around her designated "weapon" stick and lit it, making a highly unpredictable torch. Whatever Vincent did, she was staying in that coffin room until he came to his senses and killed monsters for her, or she starved to death. This was all or nothing.

It was starting to get dark again outside, a testimony to how long she'd been searching for this entrance, but with the torch and the fact that she was heading for a virtually windowless basement it didn't really matter anyway.

Wriggling through the window nearly defeated her. By the time she finally managed it her torch was out, her fingers were seriously singed, and she had long bloody scrapes on the sides of her shoulders and biceps where she hadn't quite fit through the window. Every monster in the entire Nibel Mountain range was probably honing in on the helpless damsel.

She'd been mostly counting on the torch or her memory of the game (after all, Vincent was one of the more useful characters so she remembered this bit fairly well) to guide her to his little mausoleum with minimal exposure to those weird long-limbed zombie things. However, she could see absolutely nothing in the darkness. So, randomly flailing around it was.

She stamped out the last sparks on her stick, secured it under her arm, and dropped to her knees, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. She rested her right shoulder on the wall for guidance, then gasped and used her right knee instead. Ow, ow, ow. She tried to crawl and breathe as quietly as possible, so as not to attract any hostile attention. If she just kept to the same wall the whole way, it would be like solving a maze—eventually she'd cover the whole area and stumble over Vincent's hideaway, though hopefully sooner rather than later.

Traveling in absolute darkness that you knew for a fact contained monsters was _terrifying_, Eve soon discovered. Despite her best efforts, her breath came in short, sharp pants and she was verging on total panic. When she turned a corner and saw a faint glow ahead, she almost wet herself thinking it was some crazed experiment's glowing eyes. Closer inspection revealed it to be an electric torch of some kind. In fact…

Eve squinted, a bit concerned that her fear was making her see things. But no, there were the stairs leading up, and there was the door to Vincent's resting place. No pun intended. This was…this was _fantastic_!

With the light from the torch, there was no real reason to stay crouched down, so Eve got up and hurried toward the door. Halfway there, she froze in her tracks. There was a sound from behind her.

In slow motion, very much like every bad horror movie victim she'd ever seen and despised, Eve turned her head. There were two of those zombie things behind her. They were disgusting, moving in completely unnatural ways and dripping slime all over the floor. They were also, impossibly, quite fast.

Eve screamed as slimy, skeletal hands closed around her left ankle and something that might once have been teeth sank into her already damaged right shoulder. There was no way that could be sanitary she thought unhelpfully, even as she kicked and struggled and kept screaming just in case that helped. Maybe she was slippery with blood and slime, or maybe the zombie things just weren't very good predators, because she managed to break away, though left a sizeable chunk of her shoulder behind.

Clutching the gaping wound with her left hand, she limped as quickly as possible towards the door.

"Almost there, almost there, almost there," she chanted, purposely choosing not to check and see how closely she was being pursued.

A little too closely, it turned out, as her hand closed on the handle at the same time an unknown number of limbs closed around her waist. It—or they—lifted her straight off the ground, rendering her struggles mostly useless. She did manage to accidentally kick something, but it did not appear to inconvenience her assailant at all.

Eve absolutely refused to choke in the home stretch, literally on Vincent's doorstep. With a grunt of effort, she pushed the door open enough to get a solid grip on the frame. Her only free arm was the damaged one, but she pretended to ignore the blood and the agony as she yanked with all her might.

Luck—or physics—was with her, and she and her assailants tumbled through the open door. Eve tumbled out of the thing's grip and skidded painfully on her face across the stone floor, just managing to stop before she crashed head first into a coffin. She lay still and just breathed for a minute, trying to force some sort of response from her overwhelmed psyche and depleted strength. Eventually, she managed to flip herself over onto her back, and gaped.

Her entire plan had been to create enough of a ruckus that Vincent would wake up, consider himself in danger due to the monsters running around, and kill them, conveniently saving her as well. This did not appear to have worked, as the coffins lay undisturbed except for a few splinters and bits of slime from the door crashing in.

The zombie guys, however, had apparently high-tailed it back out of the room and were hovering in the doorway, making menacing gestures towards her but showing no signs of attempting to voluntarily breach the threshold.

"Well, I wasn't expecting that, but sweet," she declared, painfully pulling herself into a sitting position against the nearest coffin.

"You should be more wary of venturing where monsters fear to tread."

Eve let out an entirely undignified and girly little scream and almost wrenched her neck whipping her head around.

She felt a tiny twinge of sympathy for Avalanche thinking that Vincent was a vampire, or at least a suspicious character. He was sitting up in the coffin behind her, his shroud-like cape and wild hair covering everything except his glowing red eyes and the pale skin pulled tightly over his cheekbones. He looked, honestly, like a corpse that had just sat up and started talking. Even expecting it she was a little wigged out.

"Uh, hey," she said intelligibly.

He said nothing.

"So, were you just lying there listening to me fleeing for my life this whole time?"

He didn't move. He didn't even blink. It was a little disturbing.

"Well, everything turned out okay, so nevermind then." She couldn't keep looking at his statue-like scrutiny so began attempting to dig some of the larger bits of rock and goo out of her shoulder wound. It was very distracting. So distracting, in fact, that she dug her fingers in too far when he abruptly spoke again.

"Leave."

Eve muttered a few curses under her breath as she pulled her fingers back out of her shoulder—bloody up to the second knuckle, gross—and favored him with an incredulous glance. She checked the doorframe—nope, those zombie things were still there—then looked back at him.

"Yeah, that's not happening."

"They refuse to enter because they know there is a worse monster inside."

It was a sign of how much blood loss and post-terror-letdown was affecting her that Eve actually looked around the room for what new horror awaited. "Are there Tonberries in here?" she asked warily.

Vincent was silent.

She turned to look at him again, and saw that he finally had a facial expression. It was slight, but the tilt of his head and the one raised eyebrow still managed to strongly imply that she was an idiot.

They just looked at each other for several long, awkward moments. "Oh," Eve said finally, her tone strongly implying that she agreed that she was an idiot. "Right. Guy in a coffin." She would need to break this habit of treating recognizable characters as people she knew, or she'd be lucky if all they thought was that she was insane. "Er." Now was the time for that brilliant story that inspired him without implicating her. "So I'm from another dimension."

He actually blinked, which almost overshadowed the sheer idiocy of that statement. When she'd been casually, as a joke, and in the privacy of her own mind, considering just telling him everything and getting him on board with her self-imposed quest, she hadn't _actually_ intended to do so.

"Er," she said again, deciding it was safest to stick with that.

He was silent.

The zombies made some weird squelching noises.

He was silent.

Blood dripped on the floor.

He was silent.

"Look," she said, speaking way too quickly, "I know you probably think I'm insane, but I came here from another world where we have stories about this world. So I know a bunch of stuff that's already happened and is going to happen, and I came here deliberately looking for you because, well, I wanted to rescue you."

He just looked at her, then deliberately lay back down and closed the coffin lid.

"Well," she said to the room at large, "that could have gone better."

The zombies squelched.

There were several things about this coffin room that one could admire, Eve decided.

Compared to the rest of the house, it was cleaner. She thought the dust was not quite so thick in here.

It was light, which was an improvement over the pitch black of the corridor.

It had a roof, and walls, so there was decent protection from the elements. It was cold, but some miracle of insulation or maybe just Vincent's proximity kept it from dropping to what she could now identify as dangerous temperatures.

Also, and she couldn't stress this point enough, it was monster free.

"Stop talking."

Eve ceased her recitation of all the things she liked about this room (for the fifth time) when Vincent sat up in his coffin and joined the conversation.

"Hey, nice of you to join the conversation," she said.

He was silent.

She sighed, then began humming the Sephiroth theme song and tapping her foot.

"Why are you still here?"

"I told you, I'm here to rescue you."

"I do not need, or wish, to be rescued."

"Well, tough shit. I have a long list of people I'm going to save and you're number one. Whether you like it or not."

He was silent again, but she thought this might be a receptive silence. She'd had a lot of time to weigh his various silences and attempt to interpret them.

"Since you asked, I'm happy to elaborate. A whole lot of people have had their lives fucked with by ShinRa, and I'm in a unique position to know who and where they are, sometimes even before they do. And I don't want to just sit on this knowledge when there's something I can do about it. It's like I killed them myself. Or whatever."

He said nothing, a closed off silence this time, and she mentally gave herself a point when he shut himself in his coffin again. Maybe she should start a Vincent-to-English dictionary.

She started humming again.

"Go away."

Eve started a bit, as she'd been dozing off and not actively trying to irritate Vincent for once. Hey, it worked for Yuffie, right?

"I told you already that I'm not leaving without you."

"You are going to run out of food."

Eve was surprised that he'd noticed this. "Yeah, well, I haven't quite mastered hunting or plant-gathering yet, and I'm pretty sure the town thinks I'm some kind of convict, so my food prospects are a bit limited. Plus, and I understand that you may not be aware of this, it's winter out there, and fucking cold."

He was silent. Eve was starting to understand why the game writers had made so much of his dialogue ellipses. She wondered if that was actually a real thing.

"…"

"…"

"…"

"What are you doing?" he asked. Eve gave herself another point for making him respond with curiosity to, well, anything.

"I read that a lot of your dialogue is illustrated by ellipses. You know, three dots? I was curious what that was like."

She gave herself a thousand points when the top of his cape twitched in a way that _might_ have been concealing a partial smile. "I do not believe that is expressed by saying 'dot-dot-dot' over and over again."

She beamed at him. "No, probably not!"

He was silent.

Oh well.

"I wonder if you can eat zombies," she mused.

He retreated back into his coffin.

Punch. Block. Kick.

Eve was bored. She had been terrified and running for her life so often since her arrival here that she had thought she would be grateful to be bored. And, in a way, she was. But, in so many other ways, she was not.

Her generally bruised, battered and scraped up person had more or less healed as well as could be expected in a dirty, musty old basement with a single, rusty faucet for water and nothing for bandages. Actually, now that she thought about it, they'd healed much better than she should have expected.

Her shoulder did not seem to be making such great progress, but it wasn't dripping blood all over the place anymore and there really wasn't anything she could do about it, so she did her best to ignore it. She'd never thought of herself as one of those people able to stoically endure pain, but apparently it was a skill one learned quickly, especially when one's life was in immediate jeopardy.

So, over the last few days (she assumed that it had been that long, though in this windowless room where very little happened it was sometimes hard to tell) she had alternately paced, danced, or massacred a few dimly remembered martial arts forms from various films she'd seen, depending on her mood and boredom level. Now she was engaged in one of the latter. In the actual movie, this had been done by animated characters with weapons and flying, but she did her best to imitate it by leaping vigorously off coffins.

"…"

Eve turned to look at Vincent. She'd finally conceded, mentally, to substituting ellipses whenever he did his pointed-silence routine. It made it seem a bit more like a conversation and not him ignoring her while she talked to herself. And she'd become sensitive enough to his presence that she could often tell when he was awake even if her ruckus covered the sounds of his coffin lid scraping.

"Morning, Vincent! Isn't it a nice day to not be lying in a coffin?" She was all set to keep rambling as he sat and "…"ed, but apparently he'd decided he wanted to talk.

"What are you doing?"

"Huh?" Not very intelligent, perhaps, but he'd shown zero interest in her activities so far, except as to how they indicated that she had not yet left him in peace.

He didn't reply, but it didn't really rise to the level of "…" because he reached up and started running his hand over the top of his coffin lid. Eve found herself oddly fascinated by this. She hadn't seen anything of him but part of his face and cape, so seeing his arm now just seemed…well, odd. It was his human hand, clad in black leather, and he appeared to be tracing…bootprints on the top of his coffin. Oops.

"Oops. Sorry, Vincent."

He gave the little twitch she'd first noticed when she accidentally addressed him by his name for the first time during a conversation. She'd forgotten, again, that he thought the alternate dimension thing was some kind of delusion and that she didn't actually know _him_, just some fictional version of him, and just called him Vincent. He'd done that twitch and retreated. He never mentioned it (unsurprisingly) but she was sure it bugged him that she knew his name without his having given it.

"I was, uh, fighting. There were dragons. Not real dragons," she appended hastily. "Imaginary dragons. From space. But don't worry, I took care of them."

There was just something about Vincent and his "…" that made her babble like an idiot. She hoped it wasn't permanent.

She gave a half-hearted demonstrative punch that accidentally hit the wall.

"Ow!" she exclaimed, attempting to fit her fist in her mouth so she could ease the sting.

She wasn't sure, but she thought he might have rolled his eyes. Slightly. In spirit.

"How, exactly, were you planning on rescuing me?"

Eve blinked. Again with the interest. Unfortunately, she had no good answer to this one, and somehow she thought 'hide behind you' was not quite the appropriate response. "Well, I got here, didn't I?" she answered eventually.

It was amazing how his facial features never seemed to change, but he still managed to convey disbelief and the feeling that he knew exactly how much pure dumb luck and half-a-step-ahead-of-total-disaster had featured in her trip here.

She shrugged.

He retreated back into his coffin.

The shoulder wound was really starting to become a problem.

It wasn't healing.

Moreover, it had started to turn a peculiar greenish color that she was sure wasn't natural. Also, it smelled.

Not good.

She had already attempted to rinse it out several times with the brackish water in the small room she'd appropriated as a lavatory (it had probably been a preparation room for dead bodies or something, but she chose not to think too hard about that). Either the water was itself the problem (possible) or there was some kind of infection or whatever too deep for even a thorough cleansing (quite likely, given the general coffins-and-zombies-and-death theme). What she really needed, was a doctor. And not the kind that was really a geneticist and lived to mess with people's lives.

She sighed. Vincent hadn't woken up for a little while, and she was feeling too feverish and lightheaded to do something creative yet irritating to stir him back to life, if only to "…" disapprovingly. She'd run out of food that morning, as well.

It was time to test her resolve. She'd been—mostly—kidding when she decided that it was get Vincent or die. Or, more accurately, she was trying to be realistic. And that had not changed. She was in bad shape, still had no weapon or skills to speak of, was once again out of food, and had no prospects for where she might get any of these things. Also, monsters.

The question was, did she just lie here until she died, in hopes that guilt might—contrary to overwhelming evidence—prod Vincent out of his self-imposed exile? Or just because she knew that it was futile to keep trying when death was pretty much inevitable at this point, one way or the other? Or did she decide that going out fighting (or at least trying to survive) was better than giving up? And anyway, would she join the Lifestream here? Technically, she wasn't of this Planet. Or she thought not; it had recently occurred to her that perhaps she had only recently gone insane, and it was her first "life" that was the hallucination, and now she'd woken up. Though that didn't explain Vincent's presence exactly where she'd expected him to be.

Her thought processes were starting to degrade. Sadly, recent experience had made her very familiar with this sensation. It was time to make a decision before exhaustion and illness made it for her.

Vincent's life absolutely broke her heart. Sometimes she would look at his coffin, think of all the videos she'd seen about him and Lucrecia and Hojo and Chaos and Sephiroth and everything, and her heart would clench and she would just start crying. It was more challenging than she'd ever expected to deal with him as a real person. As a character, his past was tragic enough. But seeing his face, knowing that he was a person just like her (more or less), made it so much more difficult. Her only consolation was that if she could learn to function around this grief with Vincent, she could probably handle everyone else. After all, the majority of his pain had already occurred. For the others, she could prevent it from ever happening.

If, of course, he ever got off his ass and decided to participate. Sometimes, he made her just as angry as sad. It just seemed so, well, obvious! What could he possibly do to atone for his "sins"—which he really wasn't responsible for anyway—moping around in some coffin!

It was this last thought that decided her course of action.

She struggled to her feet—this world may be a lot more exciting, but all this excitement had been very physically taxing—and rapped sharply on his coffin. He didn't respond, not that she'd expected him to. She was never sure if he genuinely went into some kind of weird selective coma or just lay there and ignored her, but he never moved or spoke unless he meant to.

"I hope you can hear me, because I have something to say. I read once that the only way to recover from a traumatic loss, is to dedicate your life to something great, so they can look down on you from the Lifestream and you know that they're proud of what you've done. You have to make something of yourself. Now, I didn't want to impose my own beliefs on you. Everyone grieves in their own way. So I won't. But that's what I've decided to do for myself, and so I'm not going to stay here and die when there's even the slightest chance that I'll get to that number two person on my list. It's Sephiroth, by the way. So if you ever do decide you're ready to wake up, remember that he needs someone."

There was no response from the coffin.

"Well, maybe I should have made that list after all. Helping Sephiroth will help a lot of other things, anyway. I—I hope that, someday, my being here helped you, even if just a little. And if it doesn't, well—please, tell Cloud, when you see him, not to let Aerith out of his sight once he gets to the Forgotten City. Guard her with everyone's eyes every second. And…goodbye."

She rose and went to the door without any further ceremony. The zombies had left a long time ago in search of less well-protected prey, but she was sure they were about somewhere.

She left by the stairs, propping the previously locked door with the remains of her torch. Maybe she would be able to help Cloud, even if just this little bit.

Perversely, given her newfound resignation, she encountered no enemies at all on her way out of the basement, and she successfully navigated the second floor of the house with nary a whisper from the monsters. Apparently they were all sleeping or something.

Her good—or bad—fortune finally ran out in the entryway, only a few feet from the door. She might have tried to run for it, even in her slightly addled state, but her first hint of trouble came in a burst of blue light that immobilized her completely in a case of ice.

So that was magic. She'd have preferred to experience it from the other side, at least once, but it was still cool.

No pun intended.

She was no stranger to the kinds of damage cold could do, not anymore, but this was like hours in a blizzard packed into ten seconds. She could hardly breathe she was so cold, though blessedly she could no longer feel her shoulder.

_Obviously_, she thought fuzzily, _I don't have very many hit points. How do you tell, anyway?_

Her last sight was a blurry image of the creature that attacked her, huge and blue and menacing, bearing down on her at an almost impossible speed.

Then, mercifully, she passed out.

It was the persistent throbbing in her shoulder that woke her.

Eve blinked, trying to stifle a moan at the soreness in her whole body. Her understanding of the Lifestream, while mostly limited to fields of flowers and Aerith's pink dress, had not seemed to imply that it would be painful. Her last memory was of extreme cold—an ice spell, she remembered—but now she was pleasantly warm, though still hungry and feverish and generally feeling like shit.

She decided to focus on the warm.

It seemed to be emanating from behind her; maybe there was a fire? She tried to turn to took, and found that she was being restrained somehow.

A sudden wave of panic struck her.

_Oh god it's Hojo, he's found me somehow and he's resurrected me for some sort of insane experiment oh my god I have to get away!_

She began thrashing in earnest—not that it did her a bit of good, until something beside her ear gave a long, displeased sort of growl.

She froze immediately.

This new shock had forced the panic back some, and she found, upon further reflection, that she probably was not on an exam table. For one thing, she was on her side. For another, she could move her legs. There seemed to be a single band across her stomach, pinning her arms to her sides and keeping her back against something that—a soft huff of air hit the back of her neck—was apparently alive.

So maybe she had been dragged back to something's lair, as food for its brood of hatchlings?

Eve wracked her brain for any memory of the monsters in the ShinRa Mansion, but all she could recall were the Lost Number and the chandelier guys and the zombies. A quick sniff confirmed this was not a zombie—in fact, she felt it safe to assume it was some form of mammal, but then she was left once again with little idea of what had her.

She sighed heavily, and found that while her head seemed to be cradled under the thing's head—or whatever—she could tilt it a little, and if she angled her eyes just so, she could make out what was holding her.

It was an arm.

She frowned. Something seemed awfully familiar about this arm.

It was massive, and blue, and marked with some weird white tattoo-type things. Maybe it was a boss or something?

Craning her neck awkwardly, Eve caught a glimpse of a very familiar scrap of red cloth, and the memory fell into place.

"Oh my god," she breathed. "Galian!"

She couldn't believe it. Vincent had rescued her. Or allowed one of his demons to rescue her. Or lost control. Whatever, she would take it. He must have killed whatever actually attacked her, then warmed her until the ice melted.

_That's not how ice spells work…_ her brain tried to say, before Eve firmly ended that line of thought. She _really_ needed to stop thinking of this as a video game. Some things were the same, generally, but obviously many of the combat conventions were just convenient for the game and not how these things worked in real life. She was pretty sure that she recalled thinking about _hit points_ while stuck in the ice, an admission she was determined to take to her grave. People didn't have numbers indicating how much damage they could take.

But anyway, Vincent-Galian had saved her, and now he was…spooning her?

Eve took a minute to wrap her brain around that one.

Okay, so Vincent was probably not in control then. It occurred to her, very belatedly, that depending on the good nature of a _demon_ was probably not the best way to stay alive, but as she had so many times lately, she considered what she might do about it, came up with nothing, and decided not to worry about it. Whatever he claimed, and whatever differences between the game and her new reality, Vincent must have transformed in front of Avalanche before and they all survived.

She was glad to have been able to work this out before confronting Chaos, though.

The Galian Beast stirred a bit, then whuffled into her hair. It really was remarkably like a dog. He. Whatever. She stirred a bit, and tried to project a positive aura, in case that made any difference. Despite her mental pep talk, she still felt a stirring of fear when she felt a fanged muzzle touch her head.

But it was a curious kind of touch, and, apparently satisfied, Galian soon stopped.

"Thank you," she said, in case he could understand her.

Perhaps he could, because then she had her strangest experience to date—and there were a lot to choose from—as the room took on an eerie red glow and she felt Galian-Vincent's-body start to change against her back. She was very glad she couldn't see it—it sounded _disgusting_. She could hear bones cracking and realigning, and skin stretching and other things going squelch. That must hurt like a _bitch_. She sent a brief prayer that Vincent was unconscious during these transformations.

This was obviously another one of those things that was going to take a bit of getting used to.

Finally, the sounds stopped, the glow faded, and she stopped feeling the body behind her realigning itself.

She was, however, still completely immobilized.

"Umm, Vincent?"

No response, not even a "…"

"So, I guess you are unconscious then?"

The lack of response answered her question. Well, this was a little awkward. Vincent was going to be _so annoyed_ when he woke up. She pushed experimentally against his encircling arm, but she might as well not have bothered. And it was his metal arm, so she wasn't sure how wise it was to be squirming around too much until she knew which bits were sharp.

_Well, _she reflected philosophically, _it's not like spooning with Vincent Valentine is the end of the world_.

Since she was just lying there, she took stock of her shoulder. It was throbbing angrily, but not in a you-are-dying-of-infection kind of way. It almost felt like…a healing kind of way.

It was still painful, though.

Determinedly fixing her thoughts on the very pleasant—and probably once-in-a-lifetime—experience of _cuddling_ with _Vincent Valentine_, she set aside all her discomfort and settled once more into sleep.

When she woke again, it was because Vincent had begun to stir.

She could tell when he realized what position they were in, because he stiffened up so much she couldn't breathe around his grip.

Frantically, she started to struggle in his grip, and he shoved her away like she was on fire.

She wheezed a bit, then rolled smoothly into a kneeling position facing him even as she thanked him for saving her.

He was staring at the floor, looking like he was attempting to do his coma-thing sitting up.

"Hey, Vincent, what's up?" she asked, concerned. Had he somehow injured himself? She doubted Hojo had buried him with his gun, and he was still just one man when all was said and done.

His reply was so soft, she almost missed it. Only familiarity with this particular phrase coming from this particular man allowed her to translate his "…I'm sorry."

"Wait, what?" What could Vincent possibly think he had to apologize for? Oh right, this was Vincent—could be anything at all. Well, an apology for letting her face the monsters alone might have been nice, but it had been her decision, and he was under no obligation to help her just because she'd intruded on his solitude and asked for it. "I knew there were monsters out here; it wasn't your fault I got attacked by one."

He shook his head. Apparently that wasn't what he'd been referring to. What was this, some Vincent-specific form of twenty questions, where you guessed which sin he was thinking about?

"Well, I'm sure whatever it is you think you did, you're misinterpreting it," she offered.

He finally moved, even if it was just a slight shifting in what was probably irritation, but she gave herself a point for shaking him out of his frozen state.

"And I am grateful to you for saving me."

That seemed to be the crux of his concern. "I should not have…" he trailed off.

This really was twenty questions! "Shouldn't have saved me?" she hazarded, pretty sure this wasn't it. Hoping, anyway.

He shook his head.

Okay… "Shouldn't have left your coffin?"

He blinked; apparently this thought had not occurred to him. Great; the last thing he needed was someone giving him _ideas_ for new sins.

Then she had a clever inspiration. "Oh. You mean…holding me like that."

A million points for his jerky nod.

"Oh! Well, I'm sorry if you were uncomfortable or whatever, but I didn't mind." She decided to leave off the bit about just how much she didn't mind. He was cute when he was sulking, which was fortunate, since he sulked a lot.

He finally looked at her for the first time in this conversation—their longest to date, she thought. "But…" he waved his human hand vaguely in the air.

For the second time, she felt a tiny stirring of sympathy for Avalanche's irritation with him. He really was very difficult to communicate with sometimes. Okay, think. If she were Vincent and stupid and angsty and emo about everything, what would she be wigging about right now? "Are you upset I saw you like that?"

No response.

"Because, you know, it doesn't really bother me. I mean, I was pretty wigged when I woke up and was being pinned down by some unknown mo—person, but once I recognized Galian I was cool with it."

He gave her the—second?—real facial expression she'd seen from him: incredulity.

"Okay, what about that did you have a problem with? It's not unreasonable to be a little weirded out when one thinks they were dead and wakes up restrained some mysterious being. And maybe I was a _little_ nervous, _at first_, but when all that happened was it—he—you started sniffing my hair, I figured everything was fine. And I know you don't believe my alternate dimension theory—which I acknowledge is a little out there and you'll notice I have _not_ given you a hard time about your lack of faith in me—but it's the truth, and I already know about all the demon stuff." She was pretty sure she'd covered all the possible nuances of his potential guilt with that one.

He blinked several times, apparently attempting to process this. "But…"

Apparently not. Before she could make any more wild guesses, he mercifully continued.

"You pulled away…you were afraid…"

She'd seriously hoped he wouldn't remember that two second interval where she'd panicked like a total wimp, and he had been Galian anyway, so unfair. But, wait a minute, she hadn't succeeded in pulling away that time. Not even close. "Wait, you mean just now?"

He "…"ed, and she was absurdly grateful for a return to something she could recognize.

She actually laughed a bit. "Well, yeah, because _you_ were freaking out, and you were choking me!"

He blinked at her.

"Yeah, see?" She rolled her shirt up a bit, where pressure marks from his gauntlet still lingered. Actually, some of them were probably going to deepen into bruises, and she was scratched a bit at the curve of her hip where his claws had rested.

He looked stricken.

"Well, that wasn't exactly what I was aiming for. Seriously, Vincent, relax, it was an accident. And anyway, if you hadn't shown up I would be _dead_ right now so I'm hardly going to complain about something that will be gone by tonight anyway."

He didn't say anything (of course) but he seemed to relax the tiniest fraction at her reassurance. Secure that the crisis, if not precisely averted, was at least not in imminent danger of exploding, she took stock of her condition again. Her bruises and soreness felt much better, though her hunger was—unsurprisingly—much worse. Also, she was now thirsty. As for her shoulder, it felt significantly better. Much better, in fact, than it should have after a brief rest. She experimentally prodded the wound.

"Ewww!" she exclaimed, loudly, actually startling Vincent enough to jump a bit. She drew her fingers away from the healing wound, leaving a long trail of… "Spit! What the hell? Did something _drool_ on me?"

She thought about that for a minute. Vincent twitched.

"Oh," she said, feeling stupid. "Right." She attempted to wipe some the drool off on her sleeve, but her whole arm was covered in it. "Well, I should thank you again, since yesterday I was pretty sure I was about to die of infection, and now that's apparently all cleared up, but seriously, this is a little gross."

Vincent didn't say anything.

She blushed. "Sorry. Not that I'm not grateful and everything."

More nothing.

Eve sighed. She was a little worried that she'd somehow irreparably hurt his feelings, but really, she was _trying_ to be accommodating. She couldn't just not have feelings or opinions and stuff. Though perhaps that could have been expressed a little more tactfully. Well, when all else fails, just blaze on ahead. "So. I was thinking about what I said in my grand final speech back there. You were right. Or, the subtext I invented for you to say was right. I can't rescue you right now. Maybe not ever. Maybe you need to rescue yourself. But in any case, there are other people out there who need rescuing, too. So I came up with a deal. How about, you take me to Midgar, and set me up with a fake identity, and then I don't bother you until you're ready to come out?"

He didn't respond.

"Okay, so possibly it's a little unfair to require a big favor just to get me to leave you alone, but I should hope that it's clear at this point that I _will_ camp your designated brooding place and distract you with my obnoxiousness until you're _forced_ to come out. In a way that totally respects your wishes, of course."

He raised an eyebrow.

"And, well, this may come as a shock to you, but I'm pretty much useless at taking care of myself, and I don't see how I could make it to Midgar without you," she confessed. "You wouldn't have to come into the city or anything. Just far enough that I can get there on my own."

"Very well."

Eve was honestly stunned. "Wait, really?"

He gave her a dry look. "It seems I will never be free of you otherwise."

She blushed. "Um, right. Well, thank you." She fidgeted for a bit. "So, since you're going to be-" she skipped mentally over the word "bodyguard" "-looking out for me, do you think we could look for some food maybe?" She tried to look innocent.

He just blinked, but she pretended that the sheen of his red eyes had increased slightly in amusement.

Her stomach chose that moment to growl, loudly.

This time she was _sure_ he was laughing inside at her expense, but that was fine. Any response from him was an achievement. He turned in a swirl of red cape, which temporarily mesmerized her, and headed toward the front door.

"Shall I take that as a 'yes' then? Oh! Wait, are we leaving now?"

He paused, somehow conveying without even turning around that that was a stupid question.

"Geez, I was only asking because—and I can't make any promises because it's been awhile since I played this game—I'm pretty sure Cerberus is locked up here somewhere."

_That_ got his attention. "Where?"

"Umm…wait, maybe that doesn't show up until Dirge of Cerberus? But, I mean, this is where you live, and you must have gotten it from somewhere…except wait, aren't you in Kalm when Deepground attacks? Stupid first-person shooters…"

He whirled again and started up the main staircase. After a second's hesitation Eve hurried up after him.

He paused when he heard her footsteps.

"Oh, don't mind me," she said, panting slightly after her little sprint. "I'll just tag along and _not_ get devoured by monsters."

After a moment he resumed walking.

Apparently this was acceptable.


	3. To Midgar

Traveling with Vincent was _much_ better than traveling alone.

There was no trouble with monsters, for one thing. Eve reminded herself that she wasn't a proud person, and cowered as instructed while Vincent efficiently executed everything stupid enough to bother them. It was _even cooler_ than the videos, if that were possible. Well, except for the whole blood and smell factor. But if you ignored that and just watched Vincent (and who wouldn't), his supernatural speed and ability to selectively ignore gravity was a sight to see "in the real world" as it were. Plus—and she wasn't an expert, but she also wasn't a complete moron—he was a ridiculously good shot.

There was also food. He, apparently, didn't need to eat. Which should have been obvious, in retrospect, as he had slept in that coffin for thirty years—or however many years it was now. She still couldn't quite believe that he'd decided to come with her. Her little speech must have had more of an impact than she could have ever imagined.

There was not, however, more conversation. In that respect, her journey was exactly the same.

Well, at least she could _pretend_ that she was talking to him instead of talking to herself.

"…so I was wondering about materia? Do you have any? How does it work? Can anyone use it? I didn't really understand this bit, but I think materia is supposed to be made of souls or something? And it's wrong to use it? Or maybe it was just wrong to use it for immoral purposes or something. I know Cloud had a whole bunch of it at the beginning of Advent Children that he wasn't using, but Yuffie brought it on the Highwind when they went to held him fight Kadaj, and I suppose she could have just been trying to steal it, but even Yuffie would have been focusing on the upcoming battle with the Big Bad and not finally making off with all Cloud's materia. Probably. Possibly. Moving on, it would be seriously unfair if I were so fantastically unlucky as to fall into a world with magic that you _can't use the magic_ in? That's just totally unfair. Plus, it will make SOLDIER training _really_ challeng—urk!"

Vincent had pulled one of his faster-than-the-eye-could-see moves and was gripping both of her arms, hard. "SOLDIER? You mean ShinRa?" His voice had gone all deep and gravely, and his eyes were blazing in a truly frightening manner.

Vincent is a good man, and he would never intentionally hurt me, Eve chanted a few times in her head. After a bit, she believed it, and relaxed in his grip. "Yes," she answered, lifting her chin up. "A whole lot of shit is going to go down in ShinRa soon, revolving around the three generals or however they're actually ranked, and I _need to be there_. I can't infiltrate ShinRa, or kidnap high-ranking SOLDIERs, or get anyone of significance to pay attention to me. I'm just some weird girl with no past and no useful skills. SOLDIER will get me access, and maybe I'll learn something useful along the way."

"Hojo supervises the SOLDIER program."

"Well, yes, I didn't say it was a _perfect_ plan—ow, not so tight!"

Vincent looked far from appeased, but he released his grip.

Eve fought the urge to rub some feeling back into her arms. "Look, I know it will be dangerous, but that's something, right? I _know_ that Hojo is a crazy fuck who has no respect for the lives or dignity of others, which is something, at least. And I'm not trying to become the best SOLDIER ever; I can fly under the radar for awhile, until I just naturally get to a high enough rank where it would be acceptable to converse with General Sephiroth." So that was a tiny white lie, in that she had zero chance of getting access to the General due to her superior fighting skills. But hopefully by the time she had to put herself out there and start stalking important SOLDIERs she would be strong enough to protect herself. At least against weedy freaks like Hojo.

"…"

"Unless you have a better idea?" she demanded.

"…"

"Yeah, that's what I thought." She glared a bit, then started when something dripped on her hand. Her arm was bleeding where he'd grabbed her with his gauntlet. Now that she'd noticed it, it had started to hurt. "Why don't you make yourself useful and help me wrap this."

She almost regretted her harshness when she saw the look on his face, but ruthlessly quashed the urge to take it back. After all, it wasn't _her_ fault he grabbed her. She got that he was still learning to function in his new body, but that didn't immunize him to the consequences of his little tantrums.

She did say 'thank you' in as forgiving a way as she could manage when he was done.

"So Vincent," Eve began. She'd been avoiding this conversation for way too long, but the problem with avoiding a conversation with Vincent Valentine was that it was way too successful.

He eyed her warily from across their campfire—which he lit in about two seconds with a fire materia he found in the Mansion, the bastard—which she chose to take as endorsement to continue.

"I want you to not freak out about this."

Now he really looked wary. Great.

"I just want to clarify the, uh, demon situation. Say we get attacked by—ten dragons. Now, I'll be behind a rock, hiding like a coward as usual. But let's say you run out of bullets or something. Actually, why haven't you run out of bullets? Nevermind, not the point. And you lim—uh, go all demon-y. Like Death Gigas or something. Is he the one with the chainsaw, or is that Hellmasker? Anyway, say that happens and you kick dragon ass for awhile. Should I be…concerned? About me, not the dragons, obviously. Like is there anything in particular I should be doing so I don't ping your radar as a threat?"

Now was that amusement or angst he was trying to conceal behind his cape? "Ten dragons?"

So, amusement then. "Or whatever. How should I know what you would consider threatening? Did I tell you about the time I was owned by a Mu?"

"Obviously you pose a significant threat, then."

Eve was almost holding her breath she was so happy. Was Vincent…_making a joke_ about something relating to his demons? This was…this was _awesome_. Totally worth his making fun of her _again_ for her attempts at rescue. And she wasn't sure where he got off saying that anyway. He was out of the Mansion, wasn't he?

…let's disregard pretty much every action of hers when assessing this "rescue."

"So I'll take that as a 'just hang out and look helpless and you'll be fine' then?" she prompted. She hated to ruin the moment, but this was slightly important.

"I have not left that room since I was…altered," he said flatly.

"Right, well, we'll play it by ear then." Not what she'd hoped for, but it could have been worse.

He gave her a look.

"Don't even start about your suitability as a traveling companion. I would have been dead a hundred times over by now. And everything was fine with Galian, remember?"

"…"

Eve sighed.

"I have a great idea!"

Vincent eyed her suspiciously.

"No, this really is a good idea. I know how much it pains you to converse with me, so I'll think of one question each day that you have to answer, in full. And then I won't bug you for the rest of the day!"

"…"

"And I know you're thinking, well how is that different from what we do now, except that I don't have to answer _at all_ which is way more my style. And the answer to that is, I can be _way more_ annoying than I have been. It will be totally worth it."

"…"

"So my first question is: can anyone learn to use materia? And by anyone I mean me?"

He didn't answer, just fiddled with his gun—and Cerberus had been in the Mansion, so either she just wasn't remembering how it had been found correctly or some details differed from the game to this world. She was pretty sure she could depend on the character backstories, though, and the was the most important thing. Otherwise, this quest could get extremely complicated. Extremely more complicated.

"You can't just—oof!"

He'd just _thrown_ something—oh, it was a materia orb.

"Um, okay. What should I-?"

"Look at it."

"Okay." She looked. It was very pretty. It looked faintly greenish. It had a lovely white light in the very center. She squinted, trying to get a better look at the light. As she watched, it seemed to grow, until instead of a spark it looked a bit like a tiny galaxy, filled with stars like little flames…

"Whoa!"

Fire erupted from the orb, shooting straight up almost three feet before abruptly winking out of existence. Eve felt her eyebrows to see if they were still there.

"Okay, that wasn't funny."

He held out a hand for the orb.

"Still, awesomeness. Did you see that? I did magic! I pretty much can't get out of it for now, but don't let me forget to check up on that materia/soul business. It will be important to know when we restructure ShinRa."

Vincent raised his eyebrows.

"Hey, it's going to happen. It just might take some doing."

He resumed walking.

"Hey, is that materia mastered? How can you tell? Did you know it was fire when you found it? How can you tell _that_?"

His silence seemed more pointed than usual.

"Oh, right. One question."

"Is that materia mastered?"

"No."

"How—damnit."

"Can you tell if a materia is mastered and/or what type it is without using it first?"

"Yes."

"How—goddamnit!"

"Is there paper in this universe?"

"…"

"Well how do you remember stuff then?"

"…"

"Can I borrow that stick? No, the one that's _not_ actively on fire, obviously."

"See? I made a list on this rock so I won't waste anymore questions."

"…"

"Yeah, well, hauling the rock around will be good exercise. And it's so nice and flat. Oh, and by the way, 'see' does not count as question, especially since you didn't even look!"

"…"

"Okay, question time. Is your cape sentient?"

"…"

"Okay, serious talking time. I know you're…less than pleased about my joining SOLDIER, but I'll take your silence on the matter as your not having come up with a better idea since. Now, my long range plans include overthrowing ShinRa and establishing a new government for the Planet—plans which you are included in, I'll warn you now—but in the short term I just want to make sure I can find you again. You should get a PHS when we get to Midgar, so I can call you in an emergency or when I'm ready to bust some heads. In case you're ready to participate then. Sound good?"

"…"

"You know, I think you actually talk _less_ now that we have the question game. But I'm serious about not being Mr. Out of Communication. Would it be better to send you a letter? I don't want anyone to get wind of your hideout, but I also don't want you to just disappear somewhere. Serious shit is about to go down, remember? I'm talking end of the world type stuff. And it's all going to be Hojo's fault. Well, some of it's Hollander's fault, but he would never have gotten as far as he did without Hojo's prior work, so let's just blame it all on Hojo for convenience's sake. Lord knows he's accumulated enough bad karma points. I think, after you've had a chance to think about it for awhile, you'll want to be a part of taking him down."

"What is a PHS?"

"What?"

"…"

"Oh, right. I forgot that you're old and stuff. They really didn't have PHS back then? Weird. I forget what it stands for exactly but it's a portable phone. You could get one, then tell me your number, and then I'll get one once I start getting paid and that way I can contact you. I'll save it for emergencies, in case the Turks start getting suspicious or doing random sweeps or whatever the hell it is they do all day. Um."

"…"

"How worried should I be about the Turks? I mean, obviously I shouldn't go around doing stupid stuff in front of them, but are they going to be poking around into my background and hold surprise interrogations and such?"

"They won't be prying into your background," Vincent said grimly, "after I'm done with it."

Eve was pretty sure this was the longest sentence he'd ever spoken to her.

Maybe she was growing on him after all.

Although on second thought that was more than a bit sinister-sounding.

"…"

"…"

"…"

"I'm sorry, Vincent, just, just give me a minute."

They were finally in sight of Midgar. They'd been walking and hitchhiking and walking and sailing and walking for what seemed like ever when they turned a bend and stood at the top of a cliff with a spectacular view of Midgar. Spectacular—and familiar.

Eve stumbled forward, falling to her knees at the _exact spot_ she knew the Buster Sword would later rest. Midgar wasn't a ruin, though the lands immediately around it were just as barren as they would be post-Meteor. And here, on this cliff, there were no traces of bullets, and there was no monument to mark Zack's final resting place.

She couldn't restrain a few tears, as the enormous responsibility she was taking on suddenly became both more immediate and extremely daunting. Only a few short years from now, if she didn't succeed, Zack would die here on this very spot.

_I wonder…if I became…a hero?_

She sniffled loudly.

Vincent must have been very concerned, because he came a little closer, and while he didn't quite touch her, he did hover in what could be interpreted as an attempt at comfort.

"Thanks, Vincent," she sniffled. Might as well take it in the spirit it was meant. "I'm sorry, it's just—one of the main characters, people, whatever—they're going to die here. He must have been, what, twenty-three? Maybe? He went through hell only to end up on Hojo's table for _four years_ and he somehow escaped and got a friend of his out, and they made it _this close_ to Midgar when ShinRa caught up with him, and, he saved his friend, but…he died. Can—can I really save them?"

"…I don't know."

She forced a smile. "Thanks for being honest with me." Rising to her feet, she wiped the tears from her face. "I'll work hard, and I'll try my best, and maybe, one day, we can all stand on this spot, alive and happy, and watch ShinRa be replaced."

They were only a day out from Midgar now, and Eve was certain that Vincent would be disappearing sometime during the night.

"Okay!" she announced suddenly, clapping her hands and startling Vincent, who'd been—surprise, surprise—staring wordlessly off into space. "I think I've got it all worked out. I'll send you a letter every month, so I know you're still awake sometimes and you'll know I'm still okay. It took us, what, a month to get here? So I'll start after two months, in case you decide to dawdle or visit Costa Del Sol or something. It probably isn't a good idea to send them to ShinRa Mansion—oh my god I just had the best idea! I'll send them to the Strife household, there's a woman, er, whose name I don't now recall, but she has a son named Cloud. You can't miss him; his hair is taller than he is. I'm sure with your mad skills you can manage to pilfer some mail once a month. Or—and I say this only as a suggestion—you could actually get to know them. Not, like, a lot, but just to say hi to, or whatever. I have a really good feeling about Cloud. And he desperately wants to be a SOLDIER, so if you teach him how to not, say, trip over his own feet, he'll probably follow you forever. Or, completely respect your desire for personal privacy. Whichever is more likely to convince you that this is a good idea. He's a great kid and, just in case I fuck this up, it's best that he get as much training as he can. Where was I going with this…oh, right, so I'll send you these letters—and don't worry, I just expect you to read them, you don't have to actually reply—and if I have an emergency or something I'll call you and try and find some way to retreat to the Mansion without being followed. Or, well, we can discuss that more if it becomes an issue. Also, obviously, I'll let you know when I'm deserting ShinRa and the _real_ fun is about to start. And if you decide you just want some company, I've heard there are some really great hiding places under the Plate, and I'm always happy to hear from you. This has been real fun and we should totally do it again soon."

"This has certainly been a…unique experience."

"Thank you, Vincent! But I'm really going to be writing you, and I'll come ask you again if you want to help when everything gets started. I know you probably don't believe me still, but I really do know a lot of what's about to happen; enough to know that I'll do whatever it takes to see that things _don't_ happen that way."

"Hnn."

"So, are you leaving now?"

He nodded, and, being Vincent, just turned to go without so much as a goodbye.

"Vincent. I—I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner."

He left without acknowledging the comment, but she felt a little better knowing that it had been said. Only a little, because she could see the pain that constantly filled his eyes. His healing would come slowly, but she was sure she could wear him down eventually.

It wasn't until the next morning that she remembered to ask him about the fake ID. She was worried, until she sat up and a number of papers (so they _did_ have paper!) and some kind of data disc fell to the ground.

"Okay, so who am I?"

She shuffled through the papers.

"Huh. Well I guess he has a sense of humor after all."

And with that, Evelyn Strife gathered her meager belongings and ventured into Midgar.


	4. SOLDIER Eligibility

It was a good thing, Eve reflected, that Vincent had decided that he was going to help her with this mission, even if in his own indirect way. He'd provided her with what she'd originally thought was some kind of extra ID, but turned out to be a credit card. It got her on the train above-Plate and a quick breakfast that, while totally unrecognizable, was hot and not unpleasant-tasting.

"Good morning!" she said brightly, bouncing into what was obviously some form of recruitment office. You could tell because there were slightly more pictures of Sephiroth looking tall and intimidating and a bit like a model for a very naughty magazine plastered everywhere then the other buildings. The bored-looking man behind the counter looked up from his paperwork and raised an eyebrow. So that wasn't one of Vincent's genetic modifications then. Eve quietly cursed herself for not asking him to teach her how to do it.

"May I help you?"

"Yes! I'm here to join SOLDIER!"

He looked her up and down. "Do you have any special skills?"

"Er, no."

"Prior experience?"

"No."

"Have you passed the physical?"

"What physical?"

He glared.

"Look, how about you just give me a flyer or a brochure or something?" she asked finally.

He sat in stony silence, but she'd out-waited the best of them.

Finally, he relented, pointing to his left with a grunt and returning to his paperwork.

Undaunted, she plopped into a chair and began reading through the little pamphlet.

Citizen of Midgar or one of its territories? Well, she was now. If 'citizen' was defined as 'physical occupant of' and 'possessor of a fake birth certificate.' She was becoming quite the criminal mastermind.

Desire to further the interests of ShinRa Inc.? Well, Old Man ShinRa probably had a strong interest in his own continuing existence, so really, if you think about it…she still didn't meet this requirement, but she could fake it really well.

Blah blah more stuff that wasn't important…

Ah. Physical and mental exams.

Eve blinked, a bit intimidated. So maybe she should have anticipated this; it was the _military_ after all. This could take a bit of work, though.

She scanned through the rest of the packet, and nothing else problematic turned up. She was pretty sure that there was an extensive background check, with references, for the US military, but apparently in Midgar they needed as many idiots as they could get for Hojo's crazy experiments.

And wasn't that a pleasant thought.

"Hey."

The man didn't look up from his paperwork.

"Um, excuse me?"

Still ignoring her.

"Sir?"

"What now?"

"When's the next public exam?"

This time he looked, if only to give her the full benefit of his disbelieving look.

She tried to give him her best don't-think-you-can-make-me-go-away-by-ignoring-me look. She'd invented that one just for Vincent.

It must have worked, because he sighed and shrugged a bit. "Testing is every Friday morning. Meet outside the gates of the ShinRa complex at six am sharp."

She was there on Friday morning, at six am sharp. There was a whole crowd there, and she was relieved to note that while the primary representation was young, jacked teenage boys, there were other women and a few people who looked like they'd just stepped out of their cubicle to try this army thing.

She'd attempted some stretches and push-ups while languishing at the inn all day, but had no illusions about how this was likely to go. But the important thing was to show how much this meant to her, and to show improvement. Eventually, she would improve enough to pass.

Or maybe they'd just get tired of looking at her and send her to the barracks to fail there.

Whatever worked.

It was, impossibly, _even more_ of a disaster than she'd imagined. Her only (tiny) consolation was that she wasn't the absolute worst there. One guy had to be taken to the hospital when he collapsed from what was probably heat exhaustion.

On the other hand, she'd thrown up twice and been unable to even attempt the last run of the obstacle course, concentrating on staying upright on her wavering legs. She'd been counting on some of the fitness from her cross-continent excursions to help her out, and the really sad part was that they _did—_this was just an obscenely difficult test. And her efforts towards physical fitness in her past life had not been geared towards special forces-type activities.

Lying on her back in the Inn, half-heartedly attempting the stretches they recommended to ease her screaming muscles, Eve reminded herself why she was doing this: all the lives that would be ruined in the course of the ongoing war between Jenova and Gaia.

"If Zack could carry Cloud across half of Gaia after four years with Hojo, I can do this," she told herself. With a firm nod, she forced herself to sit up and stretch.

The second time was even worse.

She wasn't the only one who showed up after a poor showing last time, but while some of them seemed to have improved slightly she actually passed out and woke up in a medical lab.

She hadn't scored any points when she opened her eyes, saw the white lab coats, and screamed like a ten-year-old girl.

After week three, she sat down and wrote out a plan of attack. First, she sorted the local foods she'd mostly identified and put together a diet plan that covered most of the nutritional categories she could recall. Second, she pieced together a workout program that started out far below the test requirements from which she could, at least in theory, work up. Third—and not without a twinge of conscience—she took her credit card around the Plate and bought a huge stack of history and materia books.

Fridays continued to be an exercise in humiliation. She could usually make it through the whole test now, but consistently finished last and the drill sergeant had designated a trash bin for her to throw up in after the long run. Some days she finished dead last, and others she nudged up to the second, fourth, once even the tenth worst performance of the day.

She'd briefly considered laying off the testing until there was some chance of her actually succeeding, but when she consistently saw the same four or five people apparently doing the same thing—victory through bull-headed stubbornness—she decided she didn't stand out too much. The drill sergeant remembered her, if only as someone to laugh at.

The long, lonely stretches of time when she was too exhausted to work out any longer and sick of reading and taking notes were filled with familiarizing herself with this world. She tried to keep her expenses to a minimum—where exactly was this money coming from anyway?—but simple things still took her by surprise.

The food was really weird. It still fell into the basic categories of meat, rice, fruits and vegetables, but the plants were all strange colors and she tried not to think too hard about where they got this meat. It was stupid, but sometimes she was almost paralyzed with the desire to just have a normal apple, or some tortilla chips, even McDonalds.

But eventually she'd get over it, and it's not that the food was _bad_ or anything.

She was also, somewhat irrationally, afraid to get to know anyone.

It happened one day when she was out getting food. She was standing by a stall inspecting some kind of melon-type thing when a kid bumped into her from behind.

"Get outta here!" the stall owner shouted, waving a hand at the kid, who took off.

"Do you know him?" Eve asked, deciding on a melon and handing over her card.

"Sector 7 brat," the man grumbled as he held the card back out her.

She just stood there, frozen.

"Hello?"

"Yes, thank you," she said vaguely, taking the card and walking off in a random direction.

"Hey, you forgot your food!"

She found a piece of garbage that looked somewhat solid and sat down, still caught up in her sudden realization. Of course she'd _known_ that, if she didn't stop it, the Turks would drop the Sector 7 Plate, but she had completely forgotten about it.

The people on her list weren't the only ones who might die or suffer if she failed.

Here in Midgar, probably half the people she saw would either join ShinRa and be killed when Genesis attacked, or when Diamond WEAPON retaliated, or when Sephiroth called Meteor, or when Weiss called Omega, or a thousand other ways.

Actually, it was a wonder there was anyone left to live in Edge.

She did eventually make it back to the Inn she was staying in, but after that everyone she met she interposed images of their potential gruesome death. It made it hard to get close to anyone.

It was great inspiration to study, though.

_Dear Person Who Had Better Have Gotten Back Safely Even If He Couldn't Be Bothered To Let Me Know,_

_Two months exactly!_

_Today I made it through the physical entrance exam and didn't throw up once!_

_The drill sergeant had an expression that reminded me of you. Sort of a strained, exasperated disapproval. I guess he didn't appreciate my victory dance._

_The top five performers each day go on to mako testing, then if they pass that they go into this sort of limbo program with some physical conditioning and very basic introductory classes until the next regular class starts up again. Apparently it helps weed out the hotheads through boredom._

_I was number 62 on the list of performances today! That's only 57 more people I have to beat, though actually 52 since five of them graduated!_

_And yes, I'm aware that different people test each day and there will be a different number next time and I don't care. I am still victorious._

_How's the basement?_

_Evelyn_

_Dear Mr. I'm Onto Your Tricks,_

_You didn't actually get a PHS, did you. No worries; I'm enclosing one with this letter. I programmed my number into the speed-dial. Just hit one and send. Those are the buttons that have the number one (1) and send (SEND) in written on them. Any time you feel like talking, ring me up._

_So, I wasn't going to question it, but now I'm really curious. How exactly does this credit card work? Do you even call it a credit card here? Should I be worried that it will just stop working one day? And whose money am I spending exactly? Should I be feeling bad here?_

_I was only 34 from the top today! I think the sergeant might actually have been a tiny bit impressed._

_I heard about this amazing kid today. He's some kind of legend in the pre-SOLDIER training test world. His name is Zachary Fair, and apparently he took first in every category, then dueled the sergeant with only one hand, then leapt over the wall directly to the SOLDIER barracks. True story. Anyway, I was inspired to write a list of people who were awesome for you. I know you sometimes miss out on the latest news. It's not comprehensive, but just in case. I know you remember my talking about the list._

_You_

_General Sephiroth (obviously)_

_Commander Rhapsodos (do you know him?)_

_Commander Hewley (or him?)_

_Zachary Fair (maybe a little premature, but I have a good feeling about this one!)_

_Don't forget!_

_Evelyn_

_Dear Mr. Probably Hasn't Been Outside Yet,_

_Another exciting candidate this month. He had the sergeant sputtering in rage in the first half hour, and I'm pretty sure he cheated doing push-ups. The sergeant finally called someone who called someone to "get this idiot out of my training field" and Commander Tseng showed up _personally_ to see what the trouble was about._

_He's the head of the Turks, if you didn't know._

_Have you ever met Tseng? I couldn't remember…_

_Anyway, Reno officially makes the awesome people list when he proceeded to _mouth off_ to Tseng as he was hauled away. Tseng should go on the list, too. For not shooting him._

_22! Almost there!_

_Evelyn_

_Dear Person Who Is NOT Going To Freak Out,_

_Good news-bad news time._

_The good news is that there was a power outage in Midgar on Friday and only complete fools tried to navigate the streets in the pitch black. Well maybe that was bad news. It will probably not surprise you that I count myself among the 'complete fools' in question._

_The better news is that you're hearing from the number 5 placement at the SOLDIER exam that day. I have my mako test in two weeks._

_I guess you might interpret that as bad news, too._

_The actual bad news is that all the mako testing is conducted in the science labs in ShinRa Tower in front of loads of important people, and one person who thinks he's particularly important, if you know what I mean._

_But I'm sure it will be fine. I'll try not to do anything to embarrass myself or draw anyone's attention or anything._

_I'll talk to you again soon._

_Evelyn_

_Yeah, I know this letter is early. I just didn't want you to worry. And I apologize for the state of this letter—mako testing sucked. I guess you already knew that. I passed though. Ergh._


	5. SOLDIER Training

A long time ago, in a parallel universe far, far away, Evelyn had entertained the brief fancy that being a soldier might be fun. You're bad ass. You can save people in distress. And everyone thinks you're totally cool! Plus, uniforms.

This was not like that at all.

Mostly it was running laps.

And getting yelled at a lot.

And running laps.

She was going to need another designated trash bin.

Training didn't get any better. It was like the physical exam to the nth power.

Morning drill was a blur of exhaustion and aching muscles.

Morning classes were spent in a haze of boredom, as the equally bored instructors droned on and on about how marvelous ShinRa was, and all the amazing things they would be able to do once they made SOLDIER, without ever touching on anything that was actually interesting. Or true. They had one class in the use of materia, which would have been interesting if they were allowed to actually use materia, but they were just paging through some dry treatise on theory that didn't cover half of the material in her private studies before arriving here.

Then it was afternoon combat training, which was an exercise in frustration and humiliation as she failed day after day to strike the target with her standard-issue rifle. Apparently you got a gun until you proved capable of not shooting yourself in the foot, then they started you on sword and hand-to-hand training. This wouldn't make any sense unless they just didn't want to waste good weapons-training on people who were going to wash out and join the regular army anyway. Which sounded just like ShinRa.

Then there were more classes, on tactics and camp management, which again might actually have been interesting if they weren't clearly geared towards people who were going to wash out and join the regular army.

Eve was beginning to suspect that she'd been put on the Idiots and Future Fodder for the Research Department track.

Oh, and then there was the food.

It was like every bad school or army cafeteria you'd ever seen on tv, complete with squinty-eyed lunch-ladies with their hair in nets behind the counter, ladling unidentifiable slop into sectioned trays.

Eve just couldn't understand why she was _so terrible_ at this. It wasn't impossible that the first few months were designed specifically to weed out the faint of heart, and she certainly wasn't that. And surely, even if she weren't a natural athlete or soldier or whatever, a few weeks of concentrated training would still have _some_ impact.

But no, her classmates seemed to be either getting the hang of it, or turning out to be just as embarrassingly incapable as she, and the instructors didn't even pretend to pay attention to those in the latter category.

And she still had no idea how this torture could possibly get her close to any members of what she had—to her very great amusement—heard referred to as 'The Unholy Trinity.'

_Dear Person Who May Soon Have A Companion In His Eternal Brooding,_

_Not much to say that I haven't mentioned in my last three letters. Still just barely scraping by in class. I think one of the sergeants might have cried a little when I dropped my rifle on my foot and blasted a hole in the ceiling. No one was hurt, though. Except, of course, my foot._

_I haven't so much as glimpsed a SOLDIER First Class. There are apparently a lot more than I thought, but not down here in the boondocks of the barracks._

_I do hear about the big three sometimes. I like to think of them as 'super-SOLDIERS' though of course no one appreciates my clever comic book references. But it gets a little lonely when everyone's just waiting for you to give up and go away, so I find my amusement where I can._

_I'm no quitter, but I'm afraid that, if something doesn't change soon, they're not going to give me a choice._

She was once again attempting to pay attention to a mind-numbing lecture about the glories of ShinRa when a SOLDIER-Third came rushing in.

"Class dismissed," he announced, panting a bit. "Suit up. We're shipping out to Wutai."


	6. Wutai

_DON'T WORRY_

_Good news-bad news time again._

_You won't be hearing from me for a little while. I'm shipping out to Wutai. President ShinRa decided that a strong show of force would be most effective so he's sending practically the entire army, including the trainees. Now, my tactics classes are crap and I'd be the first to admit I was indifferent at best to my history lessons, but I feel like this is probably a poor choice. But if I've learned one thing very effectively in my time with the company, it's that no one cares what I think._

_It's time for me to step up, it looks like. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes._

_P.S. Sephiroth is here, too. Just in case you wanted to know._

If being a soldier sucked, being a soldier in war needed a whole other word for the level of suckitude. It was a bit like when she was looking for Vincent in the Mansion, in that she was constantly cold and wet and sick and bleeding and hungry and miserable.

But then, she had been the only one in danger. Now, people were bleeding and dying everywhere, and even if she didn't know them they were still _dying_.

She was still absolutely certain that Sephiroth was a good person and needed to be saved, but she felt a tiny wave of sympathy for those who dubbed him 'The Silver Demon of Wutai.' He was _terrifying_. And she'd only seen him once. From a distance.

Like with Vincent, she found herself grateful for the opportunity to get used to the idea of Sephiroth before engaging in any meaningful interactions with the man.

And she was totally stumped on how she would convince Sephiroth to listen to a word she said.

One day bled into the next in a constant wave of carnage as the Wutaian ninjas fought stubbornly for every inch of ground. They didn't stop when the sun went down, and Eve was honestly astounded that she hadn't been killed yet. This camp was almost entirely composed of inexperienced troops, and ShinRa in all its humanitarian magnanimity had apparently designated them the "meat shield" of the rest of the army.

She wasn't too proud to admit that the _only_ reason she was still here was that she was such crap with a rifle that they'd put her in charge of making something edible out of their swiftly dwindling rations. Soon, though, there just wouldn't be enough people to man all the posts and she would be called out for what would probably be the shortest service in the front lines of all time.

"Coffee?" she asked, turning automatically to offer a cup to the next soldier in line.

She dropped the cup.

He caught it faster than her eye could follow. "Shouldn't let this go to waste."

"Uh, yes. I mean, yes, Commander Hewley, sir!" she attempted a salute. Mostly failed.

"At ease," he said, sounding amused for a moment, before his eyes flickered around the mess tent and he sighed.

It was a depressing sight. Everyone in camp was either actively fighting or passed out in their rack. She'd taken to just hand-delivering food, and mourning the fact that their numbers had dwindled to the point that that was actually possible. "If I may, sir…" she hesitated.

"What's on your mind, soldier?"

Annoying and rule-bound he may be, but his presence was undeniably comforting. "I was not aware, sir, that we were hosting any SOLDIERs above Third Class here?"

"Yes, well, that wasn't _my_ decision," he said, sounding irritated. He seemed to realize that he probably shouldn't be disagreeing with command decisions in public in front of lowly grunts, and gave her a look like his indiscretion was in some way her fault.

She pretended to be washing the table with a dirty washcloth, trying to give off 'who, me?' vibes.

"What's your name, solider?"

"Evelyn Strife, sir. First year cadet, sir. I, uh, don't have an ID number yet, sir."

She felt a little more generous towards the three super-SOLDIERs when his eyes widened in undisguised shock. "They have _cadets_ out here?"

"Not anymore, sir," she told him shortly.

It was obvious he understood what she meant. He sighed heavily. "The Wutaians have rejected our every request for surrender, even though they must know that they cannot truly win this fight. They are determined to spend their last breaths in defiance of ShinRa whatever the cost. For them, it is a matter of honor."

Eve fought down a highly inappropriate smile. Dreams and honor. And at least she wasn't the only one questioning their purpose here. But unless her mad cooking skills somehow had a major impact on the war, this would go on for at least another year before Godo's wife was finally killed and his spirit broken, and more years of pointless, bloody slaughter beyond that.

"I don't know why I'm talking to you about this."

"I'm a good listener, sir." This was mostly a lie, but he didn't know that, and she really did want to know what was going on.

He gave her a very paternal sort of nod. "Carry on, soldier." Then he left.

Once she was sure he was gone, Eve did a little dance behind her counter. Her plan to somehow get to know the three super-SOLDIERs just by proximity had been shot all to hell by the onset of the war—not that it had had such a great chance of working in the first place—but now she'd actually had a conversation with Angeal! Now if she could just refrain from getting killed…

She took firm hold of her wandering thoughts. This was obviously the throw-away camp. Angeal was the first SOLDIER she'd seen in weeks, and she thought Sephiroth might actually be in Midgar at the moment. If she wanted to get moving with her plans, she needed to get this Wutai business cleared up sooner rather than later. Somehow. When Sephiroth himself couldn't make a dent in their resolve, she sure wasn't going to intimidate them with her greasy spatula and ill-fitting uniform.

She sighed.

Well, wait a minute. What was that whole business about surrendering?

_Dear Vincent,_

_I have an idea for how to end this war. This idea is accompanied by a meticulously thought out and unbeatable plan, but just in case:_

_Vincent, in Nibelheim_

_Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal, and Zack, ShinRa SOLDIERs_

_Tseng, Rude, Reno, Elena and Cissnei, Turks (some not yet)_

_Reeve and Lazard, ShinRa executives—um, be careful with Lazard_

_Veld, he's alive somewhere, I'm pretty sure; Tseng would know_

_Elfé, Veld's daughter; she's in the Midgar slums, in a bar called the Seventh Heaven_

_Cloud, from Nibelheim, future SOLDIER_

_Tifa, from Nibelheim_

_Barrett, from Corel_

_Nanaki, from Cosmo Canyon, in Hojo's lab in ShinRa Tower at some point, not sure when_

_Cid, from Rocket Town_

_Aerith, the church in the Sector 7 slums_

_Yuffie, Princess of Wutai_

_Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz, victims of experiments of Hojo's, location unknown_

_Rosso, Azul, Shelke, Nero and Weiss, also victims, under the Number 1 Reactor (Rosso and Azul are probably irretrievably insane, and both Weiss and Shelke need regular medical attention)_

_If you need more help, Angeal's mother, Gillian, is a recovering geneticist. She lives in Banora, and I think there's a fully equipped lab hidden somewhere in the town. Doctor Hollander is a coward, and I'm sure you could get him to assist you. And this should go without saying, but Hojo has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice, asap._

_This is already unforgivably indiscreet, and I just don't have time to explain the nuances of everyone's situation. But the most important thing is to tell the SOLDIERs and others who've been experimented on that they're not monsters (and they're not—this means you, too!) and not let them do anything stupid. Oh, and to ice Hojo._

_I hope to see you again soon._

_Eve_

This was a bad idea.

Scratch that. This was an _epically_ bad idea.

During a lull in the fighting, Eve had piled her weapon and few possessions neatly on her cot, bundled a (somewhat) white sheet under her arm, and posted a letter to Vincent.

Then she'd snuck out into the woods.

On the one hand, being in the absolute front lines meant that she was hopefully not that far from the royal city. Not that the meat shields were given any information about unimportant details like that.

On the other hand, there was a one hundred percent of her getting pincushioned by shuriken with this little maneuver.

Now that she was out of sight of the ShinRa camp, she wrapped herself in the sheet and stopped attempting to be stealthy. Not that she had the slightest chance of out-sneaking the enemy in the first place; she wasn't very quiet at the best of times, and with fear making her unsteady every ninja in Wutai probably knew exactly where she was.

Which made it the tiniest bit encouraging that she wasn't a pincushion _yet_.

Just then the moon broke through the trees over a very deadly looking ninja with katana bared. He—or she, it was hard to tell in this light—said something incomprehensible in Wutaian.

Great.

Trying to look as unthreatening as possible, she raised her arms over her head, pulling the sheet out with her to show that she had no weapons. She could see the ninja's eyes widen as he or she took in her state of partial undress—she hadn't wanted any confusion about the no-weapons thing and had swiped a pair of boxers and sleeveless tank from storage. Very slowly, she lowered herself to her knees in what was, hopefully, a universal gesture of submission, and waited for something to happen.

The ninja gestured to her attire, then said something.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying," Eve said, keeping her voice as even as possible under the circumstances.

The ninja was completely silent.

"I would like to talk," she tried.

The silence began to take on Vincent-esque proportions.

"Take me to your leader. Er, please."

She started a bit when two more ninjas materialized out of the gloom. Not important, she reassured herself. One ninja could kill her just as easily as three.

Somehow that was not actually very reassuring.

There was a lot of talk in Wutaian, with enough gestures in her direction that it was clear this was about her. As if there were any doubt. Apparently they came to some kind of consensus, because the newcomers turned and bore down on her.

"Um. Please don't kill me."

One of them must have spoken at least some—Standard? Midgarian? something to ask Vincent for after—her language, anyway, because she was pretty sure that was a snort of amusement from the ninja on the left. Which was pretty much awesome because if she were a Wutaian ninja she'd probably have shot anyone from ShinRa on sight, not laughed at their stupid babble, so maybe her predictions about the fatality of this mission were also inaccurate.

They bound her arms efficiently behind her back and started walking her off somewhere into the darkness.

And so, against all odds, Phase One of her plan to end the Wutai War went off without a hitch.

Too bad this was the easiest part.

But it appeared some deity was smiling on her, because they actually took her to the main city, and right up to the royal pagoda.

It was late, but Lord Godo and his Lady Mizuki were still awake, consulting various people in blood-spattered uniforms over a large board covered with little figures. All activity ceased when she was escorted in.

Epically. Bad. Idea.

She didn't put up any resistance when her two guards forced her to her knees and then pressed her face to the floor in a Wutaian bow. She concentrated on not tensing her muscles while a rapid exchange in Wutaian went on over her head and the armored hand dug unpleasantly into her shoulderblade.

Finally, she was permitted to raise her head. A little.

"Kundo tells me that you wish to surrender yourself?"

That wasn't precisely it, but under the circumstances… "Yes. My lord."

"And that you have information about ShinRa defenses."

"Yes, my lord." Not that I plan on telling you about it, she added silently. Though judging by the practiced nature of this little routine she was obviously not the first to ShinRa soldier to seek safehaven with the enemy. Which, while understandable, kind of pissed her off a bit. President ShinRa was a colossal moron whose blatant disregard for the lives of others was deplorable, but there were plenty of ShinRa employees who had no idea what they'd gotten themselves into when they entered that building.

"It is the height of dishonor to turn on one's comrades. You will tell us what you know, and then we will provide you with an honorable death to atone for your weakness."

Well…that was…less than ideal.

"If you do not wish to share this information voluntarily, we will find a way to get it." There was no trace of the slightly ridiculous old man you fought in Yuffie's sidequest in him now—his face and tone were implacable.

Well, at least she didn't actually know anything of any significance about ShinRa's defense. Except that Angeal was at the main camp tonight. Shit. Plus, honorable or no, dying was still dying, and something she'd rather avoid.

"Your answer?"

"Well, um, I came here because I wanted to talk, so the 'making me talk' won't be necessary. But—well…" Panic was making her flounder.

"Yes?"

"What I want to say is a little, well, a little unbelievable. Is—is there some kind of oath, or something, that I could say, that would make you believe me? My lord?"

"The word of an honorless coward is worthless."

Well, ouch.

"Husband."

Eve wasn't the only one to whip her head around in surprise when the Lady Mizuki spoke up. She looked very much like a taller, mature Yuffie, if such a thing could be imagined, and it leant a little bit of courage to Eve's wavering resolve. If this were successful, she realized suddenly, Yuffie could grow up without losing her mother, and Godo would still have his wife, and with his spirit intact maybe Wutai could someday regain some of its former glory…

But now it was time to focus on her short-term goals, which were, essentially, not dying for as long as possible.

During her little mental tangent Godo and Mizuki had apparently had some kind of nonverbal conversation, because he had disappeared into another room and Mizuki was approaching her.

"My lady?"

"You are someone of significance, then?"

Eve winced. "Well, um, not really. It's a bit complicated. My lady."

The elegant woman ran her eyes disdainfully over Eve's hair, which still had grease and who knows what else from making dinner, and her oversized men's pajamas, and Eve felt about two feet tall.

"But I promise this is something you'll really, really want to know," she said lamely.

By this time, thankfully, Godo had returned, holding a red materia orb.

Eve stared. "Is that the Leviathan summon?"

Both rulers fixed her with sudden, sharp looks. "How did you know that?" Godo asked.

"Uh," she said intelligently.

"Nevermind, we will soon know. Not everyone chooses this test. You must be prepared to tell the absolute truth."

Eve wracked her brain for any clue as to what was about to happen, but came up with nothing. But if she was the sort of person who _didn't_ pursue bad ideas with a single-minded determination, then obviously she would not have been in this position. "Okay. I will."

"Then hold the materia."

"Okay." She took the orb, which pulsed gently with something like life, and she could almost hear the sound of waves against the shore in her mind. It was a peculiar feeling.

The two rulers knelt on either side of her, touching the orb and chanting in Wutaian in what was probably some sort of prayer.

This was definitely going to end badly. She wasn't sure how yet, but she was pretty sure it would be spectacular. Hopefully in a non-lethal way.

When the prayer was over, the materia was glowing even more brightly, and it was hard to look at it without squinting.

"Now," Godo said, "answer truthfully. What is your name?"

Eve opened her mouth to give her alias, when the most bizarre feeling seized her. She felt like she was suspended in water, looking up at the sun shining on its surface, floating gently along…and the uncomfortable pressure of being unable to breathe.

She tried to break out of the illusion, or whatever it was, but since it wasn't real in any sense that she could comprehend—besides the fact that she was "really" drowning—it didn't make much of a difference.

Just when she thought that she was going to drown kneeling on the floor in the middle of a palace, the sensation disappeared and she was on her hands and knees on the floor of Godo's pagoda once again, gasping for breath.

When she had a handle on herself again, she looked up to see Godo's look of vindictive satisfaction. Oh, fantastic. She resolved to speak very, _very_ carefully.

"I did not understand." True. "I am very sorry." Super true. "I will try to do better." She took a deep breath, trying to order her thoughts. An explanation for that little display was probably in order, seeing as she had obviously taken the first available opportunity to attempt a lie. "I am not from Midgar or its territories, but I wanted to join the SOLDIER program, so I've been using a false name. It's become automatic, and I just forgot. My name is Eve Slater."

"Already you name yourself a liar. What makes you think we should trust you?"

"Well, for one thing, I'm pretty sure I'll drown if I try to lie now. And I really do believe that you would benefit from listening to what I have to say."

"What do you least want to tell us?"

Her eyes flew open. What kind of question was that?

"You can, of course, refuse to answer. And then we will know how strong your resolve really is."

Well, _damnit_. She opened her mouth, fully expecting something about Sephiroth and the end of existence to come out. "Angeal is inspecting the nearest camp tonight, alone. It's just him and the usual lot of cadets and failed SOLDIERs. And no one knows I'm here." She blinked.

"Interesting. Chekov?"

One of the advisors disappeared. Shit shit shit. While she was, in point of fact, a traitor to ShinRa, her goal was to save innocent lives, not get people skilled due to her own stupidity. She decided not to wait to see what other dangerous questions they could come up with and just rushed to the point of her visit. "Please don't attack the camp. I'm part of an anti-ShinRa terrorist organization-" of me, she mentally appended when Leviathan began to stir "-and I'm here because I want to ask for your help."

Well, that got their attention. Godo's eyes narrowed. "Explain."

Okay, this was going to be tricky. "I'm sure you know that ShinRa conducts science experiments on its own troops." Truth. "These experiments sometimes have unexpected results." Truth. "I have…access, to some information about these experiments, information ShinRa doesn't know has leaked out." Leviathan wasn't sure about that one, but she concentrated fiercely on her memories of Project Jenova and Project CHAOS, which were, after all, experiments ShinRa certainly didn't know she knew about. Come on, she urged mentally.

Godo was obviously skeptical about this pronouncement, but took her lack of watery death as evidence that she, at least, believed it. "How did you come by this information? Did you break into a laboratory?"

"Uh, not exactly." Eve wracked her brain for some non-insane justification she could offer that even slightly resembled the truth. "Are you familiar with the Turks? I mean, the Department of Administrative Research?"

"Yes," Godo replied, drawing the word out in a manner that suggested he was indeed familiar with ShinRa's elite assassins and that their involvement was doing nothing to enhance her credibility.

"Well," Eve began, twisting her hands nervously, "I was lost in this blizzard, and I broke into this building that turned out to be a former ShinRa lab and I found one of the Turks who used to guard the place shut up in the basement. He knows all kinds of dirt on ShinRa—" and the fact that he had never shared this information with her did not negate its truth "—and particularly about the experiments that give Sephiroth his special abilities."

The other occupants of the room drew in their breath in an almost simultaneous gasp, and Eve cringed a bit under the sudden excess of attention directed at her. "You are familiar with these experiments?" the Wutaian leader asked, his voice betraying none of the eagerness apparent in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, but I really don't understand the science involved. But that's not the most important thing! ShinRa concealed a great deal of information about his family and origins from Sephiroth as well as the other two super-SOLDIERs, and once they find out—well, I sincerely doubt that any of them will forgive the company its deception."

"What—" Lord Godo began, and Eve hurried to interrupt before he could ask a question that she couldn't answer.

"For example, ShinRa lied to Sephiroth about his mother. I believe Dr. Hojo told him she died in childbirth, which she so didn't, and he doesn't even know her name or what she looks like! When he finally finds out that he's been working for a company that killed her—well, trust me when I say that he has truly _epic_ mother issues." Biggest understatement of the year.

"While this is all very interesting, I do not see why you attempted to sneak into an enemy stronghold in the middle of the night to share childhood tales about your general."

Well, at least he was still listening. "I did hear enough about the science that went into the SOLDIER program that I can promise you this—together, right now, those three are unstoppable. Your armies are immensely skilled, so this war is going to drag on for years, but eventually they'll overwhelm the Wutaian defense. Wutai will be decimated."

Godo shook his head, blinking rapidly. He looked to his wife, then back to Eve, eyes hard. "Impossible. They are only men, and cannot carry the war all on their own. ShinRa will grow weary of the loss of life and leave."

"I don't think there's any loss of life among his troops that could deter President ShinRa from pursuing his goals here," Eve said candidly.

Godo gave her a chance to die horribly, but she'd spoken the absolute truth. "Suppose that I believe your ridiculous story and accept your wholly unfounded predictions? Why do you think that would make a difference? Do you really think you can stop us from giving our lives for Wutai's freedom until there is not a warrior left standing?"

She thought she could detect a slight tremor in his resolve though. She must be more persuasive than she thought. "I'm not asking you to just give up forever. I'm asking you to wait. Let ShinRa think they've won for now, so you can strike right at their heart in the future."

"…I'm listening."

"ShinRa has many, many powerful weapons at its disposal. Some of which you don't even know about yet. I have plans in place to…disarm many of them, but everything depends on ShinRa not getting tipped off too soon. They're so greedy, so convinced of their own invincibility, that they don't take the time to secure the loyalty of their soldiers. They just don't care, and soon enough those same soldiers are going to start to realize that. It has already begun; Angeal noticed that the frontline defense consists almost entirely of untrained cadets, and believe me, that is a man who takes his personal honor very seriously."

"You're going to have to do better than that."

Eve took a deep breath. "Look, it pretty much all comes down to Sephiroth. I know you have every reason to hate him, but like I said before, he's been kept in the dark about a lot of things. It's President ShinRa who's the real villain here. Nothing is certain, but ShinRa's treatment of its SOLDIERs, and Sephiroth in particular…they're not going to put up with it forever. ShinRa turned them into weapons, but they forget that they have feelings and independent thoughts, too. Given enough time, I believe my organization can convince at least the Unholy Trinity to desert, and others will follow."

They were silent.

"I'm sure you can imagine," she went on, "what would happen to the ShinRa defense, if Sephiroth decided not to fight. And that's not even considering what would happen if he resolved to avenge himself against ShinRa."

"You said yourself that none of this is certain. And in the meantime, you expect me to humble myself before the ShinRa, like a dog."

"I think it's more like biding your time," Eve said weakly. "And—even if none of that actually comes to pass, there will still be a more opportune time to strike back against ShinRa. I have—an associate, who could take down Sephiroth if it became necessary. I'm sure. I mean, it's not like they've ever actually fought, but I've seen them both in action and I'm sure he could do it."

"Where is this…associate, now?"

"Well, he, um. He hates ShinRa so much, that he is unwilling to even appear to cooperate with them. I'm the inside man, as it were." Eve crossed her fingers behind her back. She was reaching her limit of strained half-truths. If all this wasn't enough to convince him…

"Tell me more about these supposed secrets ShinRa is keeping from its SOLDIERs."

Oh, that was a bad idea. Thankfully, it wasn't a question. "I don't know everything," she began hesitantly. "And… don't take this the wrong way, but it's really not a good idea for me to tell you every detail about everything that might or might not happen with SOLDIER and ShinRa. There's nothing you personally can do all the way out here in Wutai, when the main action is in Midgar itself. The salient point is that in a few years, I fully expect that most of the heavy-hitters in ShinRa's arsenal will turn on the company, in a perfect position to strike. It is my hope that there will be still be Wutaian forces ready to aid in that effort, or strike elsewhere, when ShinRa is weak. They have enough forces in reserve that a coordinated attack that blocks off all their immediate avenues for escape is really the only way I can see them actually going down." Just the thought of tipping her hand before she'd done something about Deepground or Jenova made her nauseous. "But, please believe me, I truly believe that this would be the best option for Wutai, and for your family."

Godo's body language and attitude shifted slightly, like a man who was seriously considering her words.

"So…

"What makes you think we could trust assurances from ShinRa, even if we were willing to entertain the notion of listening to them?"

She blinked. "Well, while _ShinRa_ might not be trustworthy in the least, _Sephiroth_ is an honorable person. If he negotiated a surrender, he wouldn't just go back on his word. Again, I know you don't really have any reason to think well of him, but I'm certain that he would refuse to break oath, regardless of what ShinRa might try to pull after the fact. And they're immoral, but I don't think they're stupid enough to just ignore Sephiroth, when the other SOLDIER Firsts and practically the entire population of Midgar worships the ground he walks on. Well, probably not that stupid." She winced. "I'm sorry, but I just can't promise with absolute certainty what the ShinRa higher-ups might do. And of course you already know that everything _I_ say is completely truthful."

"You can't expect me to call off this entire war simply on account of this highly improbable story that does not even guarantee results."

Eve wilted inside. "Well, no, I guess I didn't really expect it. I wrote a letter to my associate before I came here, so he could take up the cause on my behalf. But—it's just _so important_ and I feel so _desperate_ when I see Wutai as it is now, strong and proud and fierce, and I think of how it's going to be…I guess I just let my hope overcome my good sense. It wouldn't be the first time."

She bowed her head.

She really, really hoped Vincent was as clever and capable as she thought he was. And that that rumor about Turks reading through all the outgoing mail was an exaggeration.

And, maybe this was selfish, but she'd really wanted to not die.

The two rulers approached and returned to their previous position, kneeling and holding the Leviathan materia alongside her.

Eve had a sickening feeling that this execution was going to be extremely unpleasant.

The two shared a meaningful look, then they started that chant-prayer thing up again.

Despite her best efforts to be brave, Eve started to cry.

The materia glowed brighter and brighter, like a tiny red sun, until Eve was forced to close her eyes.

The chanting stopped. There was an expectant pause.

Then sheer, blazing agony shot up both her arms.

Eve began to scream.

Then, mercifully she blacked out.

Surprisingly, she woke again.

She was fairly certain she was still in the throne room. It was a bit hard to tell, as her arms were securely bound to an O-ring driven into one of the fancy pillars and her face was right up against the painted wood. She couldn't feel her arms or shoulders, which she figured was probably a blessing. Her throat was almost too dry to swallow, and her stomach was cramped with hunger.

Also, she thought she might be missing part of her shirt.

Somehow, impossibly, her situation appeared to have gotten even worse.

Except, of course, for the whole not-dead factor, which upon reflection was a pretty significant plus.

"What exactly is this all about, then? I seem to recall the phrase 'over my dead body' being bandied about in regards to negotiations for surrender."

Eve froze. That—she knew that voice.

"Genesis, please."

Deep in her heart, where absolutely no one could see, she allowed herself a tiny fangirl squee. Sephiroth was here. Genesis was here. By default, Angeal was probably here.

Where she couldn't even see them, and she was bound and possibly shirtless in the enemy camp with absolutely no good reason for being there.

Goddamnit.

An unfamiliar voice was speaking now, probably with Sephiroth's party, as he had no trace of a Wutaian accent. "Genesis does have a point, Lord Godo, however undiplomatically it may have been expressed. Why have you called us here now?"

"Thank you, Director," Genesis said dryly.

Ah. It must be Lazard, then. What was he doing here? Did he fight in the war? Wasn't he distrusted and ignored by everyone of significance in ShinRa?

Eve heard a sound that might have been Angeal elbowing Genesis sharply. Despite herself, she smiled against the pillar. This was just what she needed to restore her flagging confidence—to hear them before all the Crisis Core bullshit destroyed their lives, just living their lives and enjoying their friendship. Maybe—

"We appreciate your making the trip all the way from Midgar," Godo said, presumably to Lazard. Or possibly Sephiroth. Not that it particularly mattered, as he did not in fact sound very appreciative. Mostly, he sounded like he was barely restraining his intense dislike. "While it is true that we had resolved to defend Wutai unto death, we have had a sign from Leviathan, the great guardian of our people, and he has told us that it is time to make peace with the ShinRa."

What? Eve thought.

"What?" Lazard said.

"What?" Sephiroth said.

"What?" Angeal said.

"Sweet Goddess, what is that!" Genesis said.

Ah. They must have arrived in the throne room.

"Our sign," Godo said dryly.

"Is that a ShinRa soldier?" Lazard demanded.

"You know, I think I might know that woman," Angeal said thoughtfully.

"Really?" Genesis asked.

"What is that on her arms?" Sephiroth asked.

There was a pause and the sounds of people moving. Into her line of vision, Eve saw an elegant hand, clad in black leather, reach out and touch her arm.

She couldn't force much sound past her parched throat, but she managed a half-choked sort of noise that fortunately could not be identified as the verbal expression of her earlier mental squee.

Sephiroth snatched his hand back. She attempted to crane her neck back enough to see what was supposedly on her arms, but with little success. Maybe she'd been tortured or something?

"She's still alive?" Lazard exclaimed. "What is the meaning of this? Take her down at once."

There must have been some other Wutaian officials in the room, as Godo's narrative flowed smoothly while at least two individuals in Wutaian armor—or at least their arms—approached and began to unbind her hands. "We merely wished for you to see the Mark of Leviathan. We captured this woman wandering on the outskirts of camp—she claimed to be some sort of cook—and escorted her here in full compliance with the guidelines for the treatment of prisoners of war. We subjected her to questioning under the watchful gaze of Leviathan, may he always look favorably upon this our Wutai, and instead of answers this symbol appeared."

The people finally got her arms undone but only lowered them slightly, presumably to give the spectators an uninterrupted view of whatever-it-was. However, the new position allowed Eve to see that she now had vivid gold and red tattoos on her arms. Upon closer examination, it appeared to be all part of one larger tattoo of Leviathan, with the tail on her right arm and the head on her left and the body presumably curled along the back of her shoulder blades. Her current state of near toplessness was at least partly explained. She was still grateful that she was facing _away_ from the conversation, however.

"It just appeared?" Lazard said slowly, sounding a bit skeptical.

Eve was feeling a bit skeptical about that herself. How exactly had this happened? And how long had she been out? Obviously, there was a lot more to the Summons than had been suggested by the game.

"I think we've all seen it," Angeal said. "She would probably appreciate a blanket and something to eat now."

Angeal, you might just have become my favorite SOLDIER.

Godo was apparently satisfied that his point had been made, because he allowed her to be dressed—her arms were still unresponsive, but a faint tingling suggested that she was probably not going to lose them forever, and that she was equally probably going to have a very unpleasant time while the bloodflow was restored. There was some kind of ceremonial meal laid out with tea and what was no doubt an absolute nightmare of diplomatic protocol, but she was nowhere near coordinated enough to attempt any of that so just inhaled the scents and tried to pretend that was like eating. No one was paying any attention to her just now, but that was probably for the best as it was almost worth being hungry instead of hand-fed in front of such important personages. Almost. She tuned back into the general conversation.

"Explain to me again the significance of this…symbol," Lazard was saying.

"She will be the symbol for peace. We will negotiate the terms, and Leviathan will bind her to the agreement such that if she ever tries to go back on it, her life will be forfeit."

"Excuse me?" Lazard asked, incredulous.

Eve was looking at Godo, however. He met her eyes for a moment, his gaze hard and pointed. He was referring to their previous agreement, all the promises she'd made to fight ShinRa and drive a wedge between them and the SOLDIER Firsts and involve the Wutaian ninjas in a coordinated assault on their defenses in only a few short years.

Or she would die.

She turned that thought over in her mind as Lazard and the three SOLDIERs exchanged swift, significant looks. She attempted to sink into the floor. She'd promised Godo to do her very best to see that ShinRa didn't just ignore the peace treaty, but that was a far cry from actually having any control over their actions. And Sephiroth was only one man…

"Soldier."

Eve shook herself free of her thoughts. "Yes, Director," she rasped.

She must have looked or sounded more pathetic than she'd realized because this started off another round of significant glances. It was a little disconcerting to be the subject of the thoughts of such famous people at such an important time.

Director Lazard retrieved a glass of water and held it up to her lips, which was the tiniest bit less embarrassing than Sephiroth doing it. She choked down a few sips of water.

"What is your name, soldier?" Sephiroth asked. His voice was strong and authoritative, but more on a level with his Zack-put-that-down-before-you-put-someone's-eye-out voice than his I-will-sail-the-darkness-of-the-Cosmos-with-this-Planet-as-my-vessel voice.

Which was fortunate, because this situation was finally starting to look up and really didn't need a visit from Jenova to round off her quota of important people paying attention to her.

"Strife, sir. Evelyn Strife. Cadet third month, sir."

"I knew I recognized you," Angeal muttered.

"Third month?" Lazard said under his breath.

"Cadet Strife, do you understand what is going on here?"

"Um, yes. I think so, sir. You're here to negotiate peace with Wutai. If ShinRa goes back on its word, then I'll die." She tried not to let her thoughts about that show on her face.

She was pretty sure she'd failed.

"General Sephiroth, it's not fair to place this responsibility on the cadet," Lazard pointed out.

Eve wasn't really listening. Godo was giving her some seriously weird eye contact. Did Leviathan now gift one with telepathic communication as well? It seems like that should have become apparent before what with the whole chanting and praying and divine tattooing having already taken place and all—

Oh.

Duh.

It wasn't the treaty with _ShinRa_ she was being held up as collateral for. It was the promises she personally had made to Godo a few days ago, or whenever. He was actually going stake the wellbeing of his entire nation on her fanciful story. And her interest in self-preservation.

Her wide-eyed shock must have conveyed to him that she'd finally bought a clue, as he smoothly resumed listening to the ShinRa delegation argue amongst themselves.

Eve sat back and tried to think. Was this really so different from her original goal? She'd always intended to aim for those things. And if she failed, chances were that it would be due to some error on her part or premature discovery on ShinRa's and then she would almost certainly be dead anyway. It was an enormous, thoroughly daunting responsibility, but hardly more so than she was asking of Godo, and with far less justification. Now that she thought it through, if she did go back on her word to him or was revealed to be just a crazy person, she would still be understood to be the personification of the treaty, and her spectacular Leviathan-inspired death would both warn him and allow him to resume the fighting from a potentially better position than he was in now. He lost nothing, except whatever hit his pride took for allowing this temporary surrender. Though really it was more like a tactical retreat.

And if she was telling the truth, well, the total destruction of life on this Planet wasn't something one really wanted to gamble with.

Plus, pulling one over on President ShinRa was just _funny._

"I'll do it," she announced suddenly.

All conversation ceased.

"I'll accept those terms. I'll be the insurance that ShinRa will uphold their side of the treaty." She pretended not to notice the ShinRa delegates' aborted if well-meaning attempts to somehow subtly communicate to her that it probably was not in her best interest to place so much faith in a company who wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice some nameless, talentless cook from nowhere in the pursuit of wealth and mako without alerting Lord Godo to their concerns.

It was a nice gesture, though.

Lazard gave it up as a bad job and just nodded. She thought uncharitably that this was how he'd made it as an executive.

She mostly tuned out the rest of the negotiations, though she tried to look like she was paying attention as, after all, her life was theoretically being bound to this agreement.

But first there was the slow return of feeling to her limbs to contend with, and then she was distracted exploring the awesome new tattoos she was sporting—awesome in both senses of the world. They were pretty damn cool, all shiny and almost impossibly real looking. She wouldn't be surprised if Leviathan himself just burst out of her arms one day.

And wasn't that a convenient segue into her second interpretation of "awe-some." Obviously, deities were way more significant and personally involved in day-to-day life on the Planet than she'd ever anticipated.

She was going to be _very careful_ with Genesis when that time came.


	7. SOLDIER Secretary

Eve listened to the PHS ringing. And ringing.

Finally, she heard the click of an answering service picking up.

"Vincent, I gave you the phone so I could contact you in an emergency. It's not going to help a whole lot if you never answer. I just wanted to let you know that you can disregard the melodrama in my last letter. In fact, it's better if you just burn it without reading it. The war is over and I'm on my way back to Midgar. Uh, and on a totally unrelated note, the ruler of Wutai may be under the impression that you and I are part of an anti-ShinRa terrorist group, and it's possible that I pledged my life to our working to end ShinRa's domination. So, if you felt like nipping up to the Nibelheim reactor and checking to see if there are any weird alien statues there, that would be really cool. How's Cloud? Hope you guys are having fun!

…

If you don't know how to use voicemail, I'm not feeling bad if you get my letter and freak out."

"Who are you?"

Eve attempted a smile at the prim, starched woman who looked she'd been born to sit behind a desk and scare away sycophants. "I'm Evelyn Strife? I'm new?"

"Oh right."

Eve fidgeted.

The woman raised an eyebrow.

Eve fidgeted some more.

"Shouldn't you be attending to your duties, then?"

"Well, uh, I'm not really sure what I'm meant to be doing, precisely. I seem to have been promoted, or something, to Living Embodiment of a Peace Treaty, and the Powers That Be have decided that being a cadet is a little too hazardous for me right now, and I might be better suited for a desk job. So. Here I am."

All activity in the room ceased as everyone's head turned in her direction.

She fidgeted.

"You were a SOLDIER cadet? You're qualified to work as a secretary in SOLDIER headquarters?" Prim-and-Proper asked, pursing her lips and giving Eve a once-over that suggested _she_ found her to be qualified for coffee fetching and little else.

Eve considered her two weeks temping as her aunt's dental secretary in another universe, and her record-making failure at all aspects of cadet life. "Yes, yes I am."

"This floor is for the executive secretaries. The SOLDIER offices are in the main building off the barracks. Just go to that building and someone will give you more directions."

Everyone was still staring at her.

The lobby of the described building held one enormous desk and a few scattered plants. An older man with "military" all over his bearing and a gleaming metallic hand sat behind a computer, looking exceptionally bored. But that was the second thing one saw.

No, the real eye-catcher was a large gouge in the floor that might have been from a seven-foot sword being swung in a too-small area.

As with so many other things that happened to her in this universe, Eve was starting to get a very bad feeling about this.

"Um, hello. I just came from the main building and they said I should come in here?"

The guy looked up and said, "Well, it's about time they tracked down a replacement!"

A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad feeling. "Uh, yes. A replacement. Here I am."

"Great. He's waiting for his coffee. Kitchen's on the next floor, office is on the top floor, just tell 'em you're the new guy. Girl. Lady." He pointed towards a staircase behind his desk.

ShinRa secretaries clearly had a very unique hiring process, mostly dependent on one's ability to walk through doors. "Alright."

Technology was a little odd in this world, but coffee machines were coffee machines and Eve managed to get a cup of truly vile-looking company coffee out of a much-abused pot. Currently she was hovering over an array of cheap looking creamers and individual sugar packets. Shrugging, she grabbed a handful of both and stuffed them in the pocket of her jacket. If he didn't want them, she could just pretend she didn't have them.

She edged up the stairs until she came to the top floor, which proved to be a large, open room with an arguably pleasant view of Midgar's smoggy skyline and more potted plants. There were several doors, each guarded by an uncomfortable-looking soldier behind a desk. Except for the one furthest to the right, which featured an empty desk with a large scorch mark down the middle.

Every ridiculous story she'd ever heard of where Sephiroth devoted his free time to terrorizing secretaries and destroying company property at the slightest provocation spun through her head in an instant. She fought not to panic as a swift and surreptitious inspection revealed other signs of abuse, from scratch marks in the walls to burn marks in the carpets.

Maybe she would be better off getting her ass handed to her in cadet training?

The other people in the room—there were six—finally noticed her hovering there.

"Er," she managed, probably looking just as panicky as she felt.

"You're late," a very young man with a ridiculous mohawk chastised.

"Sorry?"

Eve was starting to think that there had been some kind of mistake made somewhere. Or that she was being deliberately harassed. Surely there was some kind of interview or hiring process for desk jobs, particularly when one was in the offices of the commanding officers of the entire SOLDIER program. Bureaucracy couldn't have changed _that_ much. Evidence of marginal competence was still necessary, unless you were Heidegger. Or Palmer. Or Scarlet.

Maybe it wasn't actually necessary.

"Geez, what are you just standing around for? Weren't you paying attention at the meeting?"

Okay, now she was sure there had been some kind of mix-up. "I—"

"Go!" The kid pointed, looking entirely too superior for someone who had done _that_ to their own hair.

Well, Eve had once thrown herself into a fistfight with a zombie. And taken on the entire Wutaian army in her pjs. And really, it was probably not possible to swing the Masamune inside an office.

One step at a time. Breathe.

There were no nameplates, but simple deduction brought her to the door directly behind the scorched desk, and she assumed her Sherlock Holmes voice was working when Mohawk returned to his computer without further comment. She cautiously pushed the door open with her hip.

The first thing she saw was the mess. There were papers stuffed haphazardly into a massive, over-full filing cabinet, spilling onto the floor and looking decidedly trampled. There was also a lot of, well, stuff. Books, posters, jackets, at least two pairs of boots, and who knows what else lay scattered about the room.

The next thing she saw was a pair of combat boots on the desk.

This did not really fit her mental image of General Sephiroth, stupid fanfiction notwithstanding. In fact, this seemed a lot more like…

"Finally! I've been waiting for twenty minutes already!"

Yeah, there was no mistaking that melodic voice. She dragged her eyes up from the boots to meet the fierce blue eyes of Commander Rhapsodos.

She opened her mouth, and squeaked embarrassingly.

"Well? Did you bring the files?"

She blinked, clutching the coffee cup like it could protect her somehow.

"Ow!" she exclaimed when the coffee spilled over her hand. She put the cup in an empty space on a nearby lampstand and stuck her stinging fingers in her mouth. "Ergh!" she exclaimed again, abandoning that plan and glaring at her fingers. "This coffee is totally vile!"

At which point she remembered that there was still an irritated, high-ranking SOLDIER in the room.

She peered up at him through her bangs, hoping to gauge his mood before actually having to think of something to say. Unlike Vincent, his emotions showed plainly on his face. Right now, he was the picture of incredulity.

"What exactly are you doing?" he asked finally, sounding less irritated and more confused. She'd count that as a good sign.

"Uh. I brought coffee," she said, pointing to the mangled cup, which was slowly dripping onto the table. "Also, I'm pretty sure I'm the target of some kind of secretarial hazing ritual." She shut herself up before she could say anything even more stupid.

And then he laughed.

Eve couldn't quite keep her eyes from widening. Wow. He really does have a beautiful voice.

He smirked.

"Did I say that out loud?"

Nod.

She blushed furiously. "Right. So, I have no idea why I'm here or what I'm supposed to be doing." Not the smoothest change of subject, but it's not like she had any chance of salvaging her reputation as a person with a smidgeon of tact or good sense.

He jumped out of his seat, somehow getting his feet off the desk and onto the floor without falling on his face, and rescued the remains of the coffee before it started dripping on some files. "Where did you get this crap?"

"Uh. Kitchen. Someone in the main lobby told me to bring it up. Someone else in the room out there sent me in here."

He raised an eyebrow. "How did you even get in this building in the first place?"

"I was in the Tower in the personnel office and they told me to come here."

"Well how did you get there?"

"My sergeant sent me."

He stopped hunting for a trashcan and gave her some eye contact. "You're a SOLDIER?"

Eve thought about getting offended at how full of disbelief his voice was, then decided to let it go. She was short, totally un-muscled, wearing a skirt, and had already spilled coffee all over herself. Plus, her wartime participation consisted almost entirely of flipping burgers and being taken hostage. _She_ sometimes felt disbelief that she was a soldier. "Sort of. I'm a cadet. Or I was a cadet, anyway."

"Wait, I know you. Aren't you the cadet who was captured in Wutai?"

Eve rolled her sleeve up a bit so he could see the beginning of her shiny new tattoo. "Yeah, that's me. Sergeant Greer found me with one foot still on the transport from Wutai to tell me that the higher-ups had decided that I should do something less dangerous with my life while I'm the embodiment of the treaty. Apparently if I get myself killed for some un-related reason the treaty will still be voided. So they sent me to the Tower to get a desk work assignment."

"Just so we're clear: you showed up to ask for some desk work, and they sent you to be my personal secretary, second-in-command of the largest and most sophisticated military on the planet, just so you would have something to do."

"Well, that's not exactly how they put it, but essentially yes. But like I said, I'm pretty sure someone was messing with me somewhere in this delightful 'go here, talk to this person' quest that has consumed my morning. I am of course familiar with the quest-type where you're supposed to explore the environment so get stuck carrying stupid messages between various people who could easily have waited or got a real messenger or something, and I _used_ to think things like that didn't happen in real life, but there you go. At least no one had exclamation points over their heads, just poor hairstyle choices."

Genesis—Commander Rhapsodos—blinked. "What the hell are you babbling about?"

"Um, nothing. Sorry. I didn't mean to bother you or disrupt your morning. I should probably just go now, and figure out what I'm actually supposed to be doing."

"Well, since you're here, why don't you go find out where the files I'm looking for are. I was expecting a delivery from the Director's office. Someone out there probably knows." He waved a gloved hand in the general direction of the room she'd come from.

"Oh. Okay. Sir," she added, somewhat belatedly.

"As a treaty, I'm not sure you still fall in the chain of command."

Eve laughed. "Probably not, sir, but the less attention brought to my new role the better, I would expect. There might be some secondary goal of keeping me near the barracks so I'm not targeted by someone who wants the war to continue."

He looked thoughtful. "Hmm. Well, carry on, cadet."

Eve eventually located the missing secretary in medical. Actual-medical, not Hojo-research-department-medical. The guy had fallen in the copy room and sprained his ankle, but was expected to be back at his desk the next day.

She dutifully returned to Genesis' office to inform him of her discovery.

"Well did you bring the files?"

"What files?"

"The files he was supposed to be copying!"

"Oh. I'll just go get them now, sir."

"Commander? He didn't get a chance to copy them. I have the originals, though."

"Well, why don't you go copy them."

"Sir, I don't know where the copy room is."

"Why do you think I would know that? Go ask someone else."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sorry sir, but it appears the copy machine in this building is broken."

"Cadet, all I want is a copy of these files. It's eight pieces of paper. Why is this taking all day?"

"I'm sorry sir, but Advanced Photocopying wasn't exactly a part of the cadet training schedule. Mostly we just ran in circles a lot, which I think I am doing quite adequately at the moment. Sir."

"Cadet, you might be the worst secretary I've ever had."

"Well sir, I'm afraid we can't all be perfect on our first day."

"Watch it, cadet."

"Sorry, sir."

"So you can't copy, and you're not allowed to fight. Is there anything you can do?"

"Well," she glanced around the office, "not to be rude sir, but I'm very good at organizing things."

"…"

"…"

"Very well, cadet. I'm sure there's some kind of system; just figure out."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, and cadet?"

"Yes sir?"

"If you throw away anything of mine, you'll wish you'd never been born."

"Understood, sir."

It took Eve the entire rest of the work day, almost four hours, before she had collected all the scattered files lying about the office. She loved Genesis, but she wasn't stupid—everything that wasn't obviously a military file she left exactly where it was. Several documents looked decidedly the worse for wear, with bootprints and coffee ring stains and, in one case, what she strongly suspected to be a quote from _Loveless_ in the margins.

And speaking of the epic…

"…_there are no dreams, no honor remains. The arrow has left the bow of the Goddess…"_

"Genesis!"

After listening to the soothing, lyrical sounds of the play for the past who-only-knew-how-long, Eve almost jumped out of her skin at the sudden interruption. She retreated a little further behind the cabinet with her stacks of paperwork.

"Yes, what is it, Angeal?"

The other Commander blinked, looking around. "Were you cleaning in here?"

"Sort of. Beast-woman sent me a temp."

"You really shouldn't call her that. She hates you enough as it is; half the people she sends have nervous breakdowns, and the other half only stick it out until they can get a transfer."

"Well, maybe if she sent someone actually useful…"

"Well, maybe if you would quit traumatizing them…"

"Well, maybe if they weren't so stupid…"

"Well, maybe—wait, enough of this. I was coming to ask you if you had a copy of Zack's latest mission report."

Eve pretended not to notice the glare that was sent her way.

"Not yet. The copy center is apparently some sort of death trap; my current secretary somehow sprained his ankle there, and the temp was unable to even find the place."

Eve glared at her paperwork.

"The—oh, I didn't see you there. Aren't you the cadet from Wutai? Strife, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I remember Lazard mentioning that they were planning on transferring you—but I didn't realize they meant to send you here."

"I don't think they did, sir. I'm just cleaning up a little until someone decides where I should go."

"Oh. Genesis, I didn't realize you let anyone touch your things."

"It's just files, Angeal. Is there something you wanted?"

"It's just that it looks so much better in here—"

"Angeal, you interrupted my reading. I don't even remember where I was now."

"…_my soul, corrupted by vengeance, hath endured torment, to find the end of the journey in my own salvation, and your eternal slumber,"_ Eve quoted absently.

She blinked at the almost tangible silence. The two SOLDIERs were staring at her. "What?"

They kept staring.

"What? I was listening."

"Good at organizing, huh?" Genesis said finally.

"Genesis, you can't hire someone because they can quote _Loveless_."

"They sent her here, I can hire her if I want to. If she's terrible at it, I'll just get someone else."

"Genesis—"

"No one sprains their ankle in a copy room. What's-his-face is just looking for an excuse—"

"How can you not know his name? He worked for you almost two months in Wutai!"

"—to clear out, and I'm sick of the idiot temps they bribe into coming here. At least she's funny."

You know, I'm still here, Eve thought.

"You shouldn't talk about her while she's sitting right there."

"Go away, cadet, I want to talk about you behind your back."

"Now, really, Genesis—"

Eve sensibly went away.

Unbelievably, and possibly unwisely, Genesis argued with the personnel office until he got bored and just told her to sit at the desk and not move unless physically forced to do so. Then she was supposed to come and get him. So far, no one dared to test his resolve.

Not the most promising start, but she was working for _Genesis Rhapsodos_ so it was totally worth it.

Or so she kept telling herself.

"Cadet, where is that file I asked for?"

"I don't know sir, maybe if you actually filed things it would be easier to find!"

"That's what you're here for!"

"It's only been an hour! I think some of these files are from before I was born! Sir!"

"Well go ask Sephiroth for a copy!"

"Fine! I mean, yes, sir!"

From what she'd been able to glean from his complaints and the other secretaries' frosty pointing, both Genesis and General Sephiroth had filing cabinets with, theoretically, complete copies of all mission records since the beginning of SOLDIER. Why they had two paper copies in rooms that were right next to each other, especially since they obviously had computers, was completely beyond her.

Also, apparently, completely beyond Genesis. His filing cabinet was like a war zone. As she was now in a position to know.

Emerging into the main room, Eve quietly regarded the other six secretaries. They hadn't really spoken, as she was apparently violating some unspoken rule of secretary-solidarity by (a) bypassing all the red-tape to get here and (b) getting along with Commander Rhapsodos.

On the one hand, if this was "getting along with" Commander Rhapsodos she would hate to see what he was like when he was trying to get rid of you. On the other hand, she had a sneaking suspicion that this might be related to the scorch mark on her new desk.

So, now all she had to do was somehow convince these bureaucrats who were dedicated to her total failure do her a favor and locate a file. Right.

Knock, knock.

"Excuse me, General Sephiroth?"

Eve pretended not to notice the six pairs of eyes attempting to set her on fire through sheer force of will. Wait, you weren't supposed to approach the General of SOLDIER uninvited? Hmm, too bad no one had told her that. Look away, nothing to see here folks. She didn't even attempt to hide her smugness.

"Enter."

His office was the same general size and color scheme as Genesis', but there the similarities ended. It was absolutely pristine. Even the desk was pristine, with the computer exactly so in the corner and a single stack of papers exactly lined up with the frontmost left corner of the desk.

It was also definitely not big enough to swing his sword, which was probably why the weapon was nowhere to be seen.

She'd been spending way too much time with Genesis already if her first concern upon entering an office was the feasibility of wielding a weapon inside.

"Was there something you wanted?"

Right, focusing. "Commander Rhapsodos is looking for a file. May I borrow yours and make a copy, sir?"

Unlike Genesis, who seemed to alternate between pretending she didn't exist and throwing fits about things that she had no control over, Sephiroth just sat in his chair and stared at her. It was, actually, very disconcerting. His eyes really were slitted like a cat's, and seriously what was with the way his hair stuck up like that? She belatedly wondered if he could read her mind, and tried to think about something neutral. This was not helped by the fact that he was actually wearing a button-down shirt and, presumably dress pants, though she couldn't actually see them since his feet were most definitely not on his desk. She supposed that she had been aware, in a theoretical sense, that he couldn't wear that no -doubt highly uncomfortable—not to mention cold—uniform 24/7, but somehow that had never translated into Sephiroth wearing a suit.

"Very well, Cadet…?

"Strife, sir." They both stayed where they were and looked at each other for a few moments. He slowly raised an eyebrow, then pointedly returned to whatever he was doing with the paperwork in front of him. A few hours with Genesis had given her very little idea of what exactly that might be. "Oh, right. I'll just look for it, then. Thank you, sir."

She walked over to the (two) towering filing cabinets. She was ordering her new boss another cabinet first thing when this little adventure was over with. Obviously, if they had the exact same number of papers, they would need the exact same amount of space.

Though that was really assuming a lot, that Genesis hadn't lost a single file with his nonexistent filing system.

She hesitantly opened a drawer, which unsurprisingly was filled with files in orderly lines, each clearly labeled with a name and a date.

What exactly those names and dates might represent, she had no idea.

She checked her notebook, which she'd started carrying around when it became clear that her job requirements would be communicated via Genesis ranting about whatever was most irritating him about being desk-bound at the moment.

'_The mission where that kid with the tattoo almost got eaten by a Zolom.'_

Oh, fantastic.

She loved Genesis to pieces, but who the hell put him in charge of an army?

She carefully looked over at Sephiroth, who seemed completely engrossed in what was probably running the entire SOLDIER unit, since Genesis obviously did not contribute significantly to that endeavor. She looked back at the files, tentatively running a finger over a few of them so she could see the neat labels.

Maybe if I just take one at random, she mused. So then it's just Genesis who thinks I'm an incompetent moron, instead of Genesis _and_ Sephiroth.

She was so busy speculating, that she jumped half out of her skin when a hand intruded on her line of vision. Déjà vu, she thought, a bit giddily.

"I'm sorry, sir, did you need something?" She made to move away from the cabinet, but there wasn't really anywhere to go that did not involve awkwardly brushing up against Sephiroth. He was so tall that he could comfortably reach the cabinet around her, but not quite tall enough that she could comfortably duck under his extended arm.

"Did you plan on doing more than admire the filing system, cadet?" he asked dryly, obviously aware of her predicament.

"Looking for a good model to follow, sir," she answered back smartly. As had become her refrain lately, she mentally chided herself for once again failing to keep her mouth shut. Most recent experiences notwithstanding, this was the military and they believed in _discipline_ here.

To her complete shock, he made a noise that might have been an aborted chuckle. Well, I'm just amusing everyone today, aren't I, she thought darkly. Well, if Sephiroth was amused, then it was worth a little humiliation. "Commander Rhapsodos asked me to locate a particular file, but his description was somewhat…vague. Do you know what mission he's talking about?" She showed him her notation.

She still couldn't see his face, but she was sure he was giving off amused vibes. "I don't remember this particular mission, but the person he's referring to is SOLDIER Second Class Armon Jepsit."

"Okay, thanks. It shouldn't take too long to find, then."

He went back to his desk, presumably to finish his work, while Eve dug through the files. Fortunately, this Jepsit person didn't go on too many missions, so she only had to scan through four files before finding the reference to the Zolom. It wasn't the Midgar Zolom, fortunately for Jepsit; otherwise he would have had more problems than a nasty bite in the leg.

She also learned that apparently there were only ten months in a year here on Gaia, and none of them had familiar names. She was a little horrified that it had taken her so long to realize this.

But, total lack of observational skills aside, she had successfully located the needed file and went off to make copies in the main building.

She was careful not to sprain an ankle.

The next day she showed up for work two hours early, which she figured gave here about four uninterrupted hours before her boss put in an appearance. Once people started trickling in at a more decent hour, she would ask someone where the filing cabinets came from and go bully someone in supply somewhere. And by "people" she meant Angeal, because she had probably exhausted her tolerance quota with the General for the _month_ with that little stunt yesterday, and Genesis was unlikely to be any more informed on the subject than she was. It seemed she was destined to make an idiot of herself in front of the high-ranking SOLDIERs.

Could be worse.

The project for the day (and, quite possibly, the week, month and year) was to impose some order on Genesis' collection of paperwork. If ShinRa was going to insist on illogically multiplying paper, she would see to it that it multiplied in an orderly fashion. Accordingly, she was dressed in her cadet fatigues and had her slightly-grown-out standard-issue bowl cut wrestled into two small ponytails. She probably looked like a child dressing up in her dad's clothes, but everyone else could just deal. It wasn't like it was a secret that she had basically no qualifications for this position, and only the vaguest idea of what she was supposed to be doing. She still didn't have a computer or a telephone, but she loathed talking on the phone and had every intention of just letting that lie until someone said something about it.

Commence Operation Clean-up o'clock.

She spent a brief moment considering whether she cared what the other secretaries thought of her, then began dumping the files in the main room, first the ones she'd collected from the floor the previous day, then the contents of the much-abused cabinet. This took a surprisingly long time, but finally the corner opposite the elevator was a huge stack of paper.

Then she ran up against her first problem—there were no labels.

For a brief, insane moment, she considered finding some in Sephiroth's office. Yeah, probably the most unique reason that someone had been impaled on the Masamune—office supply thievery.

Once she stopped imagining herself in Cloud's place in Advent Children, clutching a stapler and handful of neon-colored paperclips, she smacked herself in the head. Probably Sephiroth did not actually do all the filing personally. That's what secretaries were for. Duh. And she had no qualms whatsoever about stealing from her hostile and entirely unhelpful coworkers.

It didn't take long to find a bunch of labels in the various desks, and she settled comfortably on the floor with the pilfered labels and a few pens, choosing a file at random and skimming the contents.

Mission Commander's name and date the operation commenced. If it worked for Sephiroth, then it would be just fine for her.

The project actually turned out to be way more fun than she'd anticipated.

The whole report was no doubt rather dry, but skimming for the details she needed allowed her to learn about all sorts of bizarre problems and monsters that SOLDIERs faced without any of the dull stuff. Sometimes she came across a name she recognized and then it was _really_ fun. She'd confirmed that Genesis hated to be dirty, mentally filed away the fact that Angeal had once been totally owned by a sentient plant he'd been investigating, and discovered to her delight that Zack really was just as fun-loving and outrageous in real life as he was in Crisis Core.

The expressions on her colleagues' faces when they'd seen the disaster area that used to be their workspace was comical. Well, if they were really that concerned about it, maybe they should have done something about the lack of filing system earlier. Besides, she'd left them a path to their desks.

For better or for worse, she snuck out for a bathroom break just before the SOLDIERs arrived—she still didn't know who occupied the other four offices—but Sephiroth's scrawny, annoying little secretary was happy to inform her that the General wanted to speak with her. Tell-tale.

With a lot more bravado then she felt, Eve raised her chin and went into his office.

She faltered a bit when she realized that Angeal and Genesis were also there, along with four strangers with glowing eyes who, presumably, were the mysterious other SOLDIER administrators.

"Good morning, sirs," she said, deciding to err on the side of caution, and keep her comments to a minimum.

"Filing project?" the General asked mildly.

"Yes, sir."

"This will be cleared up by the weekend."

"Uh, yes, sir." Well, it's a good thing I have no life at all.

"You are excused from your other duties until this has been taken care of."

"Yes, sir." What other duties?

"I'm sure Commander Rhapsodos would be happy to assist you in your…endeavor."

Eve politely pretended not to notice Genesis glaring at Sephiroth. "Thank you sir, I've got it. Oh, wait. Actually—" she pretended even harder not to notice when the glare shifted to her "—does anyone know where the filing cabinets live? Lonely filing cabinets who want a new home in the Commander's office?" Okay, possibly that could have been phrased better.

Or not, because the glare eased and Genesis laughed. "You have such an odd way of talking about things," he said. "Why don't you ask one of your compatriots?" He gestured vaguely towards the other room.

"Well, I think they pretty much hate me, sir. I'd be lucky if they didn't direct me into the sewers or…something." Like the Research Department.

"Maybe you should stop stealing their office supplies," Genesis suggested.

Eve attempted to look innocent. Stealing? Office supplies? Me?

"_All_ supplies, cabinets and labels included, can be requisitioned from the supply office on the eighteenth floor of the Tower," Angeal added, and if his voice was a bit on the stern, chiding side, well, at least she finally had the needed information.

"Thank you, sir," Eve said. She fidgeted a bit. "Um, so do you want me to just…carry the cabinet here, then?" That was going to be a nightmare.

Just then, the door swung open.

"Zack!" she exclaimed, narrowly missing being run down as he bounced into the room.

"Whoa, there," he said, steadying her. He looked her over. "Do I know you?"

Umm… "You were like a legend when I was in the pre-cadet training. Did you really jump over the wall?"

He was delighted to hear that people told legends about him. "Well, not quite, but—"

"Wait a minute," Genesis interrupted." You are now on your third day working closely with the three most powerful and well-known SOLDIERs in the world, and you're going to gush over _Angeal's pet_?"

"Well, it was cool," Eve said defensively.

"Genesis, shut up," Angeal said, far too politely for his word choice. "If she were gushing over you, you would get mad about that, too. How many times have you complained that the temps are too busy gawking and looking for autographs to get any work done?"

"I _could_ gush, if you really wanted me to," Eve said helpfully. "Though to be fair, we actually watched a video of Zack's admissions test into the program and I've never actually seen anyone else in this room fight. I'm sure you're all totally awesome though."

"They made a video?" Zack asked, delighted all over again.

"You bet we're totally awesome," Genesis muttered, not quite under his breath.

"I don't see how this has any bearing on anyone's work," Sephiroth said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Sorry, sir," Eve said, forestalling the conversation from degrading any further. It was good karma—99% of all conversational distractions in conversations she participated in were her fault. "Zack, what are you doing right now?"

"Uh, visiting? I don't have training for another half hour. Or, when this meeting is over."

"Great. Come impress me with your manliness and carry a filing cabinet for me."

"Um, okay."

In the end, the project took almost three weeks, but Sephiroth chose to tolerate it when she cleared the entire half of the room between the elevators and the office doors in time for his deadline.

_Hey you,_

_So it seems that my military career is over, to everyone's satisfaction and relief. I'm pushing papers (literally) for SOLDIER's second in command, which, while it is rumored to have a high mortality rate, has been mostly uneventful so far._

_It's been really amazing getting the chance to work with everybody. Nothing like fighting about coffee stains on official paperwork, tripping over their stupid plants or watching someone blush over fanmail to realize that they're people, not just legends. _

_I've spent the whole month on a massive file organization project (exciting, right?) so I've had zero time to think about the Project I mentioned in my voicemail. Though it is a bit difficult to bounce ideas off someone who probably isn't reading my letters, and anyway has never replied to a single one. In fact, it closely resembles just talking to myself, except marginally more justified._

_I'm not sure I've got all my dates straight—and why didn't anyone tell me that there are only ten months in a year?—but shouldn't our mutual blond friend be fourteen soon? Do me a favor and, if Tifa gives him a hard time, tell him it's just something girls do to boys they like. You'll make his day, if not his entire life. I don't know if you heard about the Bridge Incident, but it was totally not his fault, as anyone who had ever met him or Tifa would immediately realize._

_Don't you ever, I don't know, get bored?_

Filing project over, Eve was at a loss. She still had no office equipment, and anyway, in all the time she'd been organizing files in the main room and engaging in a mutual ignoring contest with the other six secretary-types, not a single phone had rung. They did seem to be busily typing away at their computers, but about what she couldn't imagine. Did they have Facebook here?

The whole office received only a small pack of mail each day, and there just didn't seem to be anything to do except occasionally chase away or, alternatively, admit visitors.

Was she really getting paid for this?

After about twenty minutes of fidgeting and building a tower with (stolen) pencils, Eve let herself into Genesis' office.

"Just me," she said when he looked up.

"…did you want something?" he asked after a pause.

"Not really. Just—what do you do around here all day?"

"I don't know what _you_ are supposed to do, but I'm only here for the morning, and then only when I'm not on a mission. We're just having a bit of a dry spell at the moment. Everyone is still settling in after Wutai."

"Oh. So what do you do all afternoon?"

"Train, mostly. Sometimes I go out. Is there a reason we're talking about this?"

"Well, sir, frankly I'm bored. I don't have a computer or a phone, and no one apparently expects me to do anything. Do you, I don't know, want some coffee or something?"

"Ugh, not from his building."

"Well sir, I could probably go under the Plate and back before anyone even started looking for me, if you want some good coffee."

"Cadet, it is not my job to entertain you."

"I know that, sir."

"So go away."

"Well, what are you doing? Can I help?"

He rolled his eyes, then held up the book he was reading. _Loveless, _of course.

"So, not working then." He looked like he was getting ready to get mad. "Well, are you reading out loud? Can I listen?"

He stared.

"Or not."

"Seriously?" he asked.

"Uh, yeah. Sir. Why not? I like _Loveless_, you've got a great voice, I'm not busy."

He pulled one of his mind-boggling leaps from behind his desk, and practically shoved her onto the couch. "Sit, sit. Now, _When the war of the beasts brings about the world's end…_"

As she let his words flow over and through her, Eve's mind supplied several images of his degradation and death, and she silently vowed to devote more time to planning her little coup.

Much as she genuinely loved it, Eve couldn't actually listen to _Loveless_ all day, every day, and even when she started skipping out when Genesis did, that still left many long morning hours with nothing to do, not to mention the long afternoon hours where, while not actually trapped behind a desk, she still had nothing to do.

She couldn't quite bring herself to pester Sephiroth, and she didn't really know the other guys well, so she went to bug Angeal instead.

"Good morning, sir," she said, breezing right past his secretary, whose mouth was still open in protest.

"Good morning, cadet," he said, raising an eyebrow (and why could everyone else do that!).

"So, do you need any help with anything?"

"Don't you already have a job?"

You'd think so, but I'm not sure Genesis actually does anything in that office besides sign the occasional report. Come to think of it, what does _Sephiroth_ do? Lazard is the one who handles the day-to-day operations of SOLDIER. Maybe he assigns missions… "Yes, sir. I'm, er, having a bit of a break, at the moment, and I want to keep busy." She eyed the huge stack of paper on his desk.

"I am updating personnel files," he explained. "All new cadets, and all information on current cadets and SOLDIERs, is submitted in written format, then I add it to the computer file."

"Oh. That seems—" stupid "—inefficient."

He sighed. "It is."

"Well, I would offer to help, but I don't actually have a computer."

"How can you not have a computer?"

"Well, I haven't seemed to need one yet. And it's not something you can just requisition from supply without a good reason. And since no one's given me anything like a job description, I have a pretty weak case for the supply-Nazi about why I should get one."

"Supply-Nazi?"

"It just means that the head of supply has…very definite opinions about who deserves nice things and who is an irritating ruffian who should be put outside like a dog."

"I see. Well, some of these are for current SOLDIERs and some are for new cadets, so if you could sort them into two piles and put them in alphabetical order that would be extremely helpful."

"Oh! I can do that!"

Humming quietly, Eve settled cross-legged on the floor and began organizing the files.

"Ooh, look! It's Cloud! He's here!"

"Who's Cloud?"

"Oh, he's—" she scanned the file quickly "—he's my little brother! He said he was going to try for SOLDIER, but I didn't realize so much time had passed! This is so exciting!" She wiggled in delight.

"I didn't know you had a brother," Angeal commented, reaching for the file. "Hmm. Marginal pass, but says here that he had a good foundation, just suffered a bit being so much smaller than the other hopefuls." He continued to flip through the pages of the file, scanning whatever information was contained there.

"Yeah, he's kind of scrawny, but he's stubborn as a mule and never let's go of something once he puts his mind to it," Eve said immediately. Should she go for it? What the hell. "He's kind of shy, too, but I'm sure he'll meet someone soon who'd be happy to show him around and make him feel comfortable," she added, way too casually for it to actually be casual.

Fortunately, Angeal was either engrossed in his reading or had very poor people skills. "Yeah," he said absently. "I'm sure Zack would be happy to show him around."

"You think? Could you ask him?" Eve was practically holding her breath she was so anxious. Her mind was full of images of Zack and Cloud, laughing together, Zack ruffling Cloud's hair, Zack making dumb jokes about small towns, Zack and Cloud escaping the mako tanks, Zack setting Cloud against the rock as he went to fight their pursuers…

"Yeah, I could ask him," Angeal said, interrupting the downward spiral of her thoughts.

"Thank you! I'm sure he'll really appreciate it," Eve said happily, before returning her focus to the files.

Most days, Eve was at a loss to explain why Genesis actually drew a salary for this job.

But, catty internal monologues aside, working as Genesis' secretary was actually just about the coolest job she could have imagined. For one, it wasn't terribly strenuous, which could only be of the good for someone with exactly zero qualifications beyond "mostly literate" and "otherwise unoccupied." For another, Genesis himself was never boring. Dramatic, irritating and moody bordering on bipolar, but not boring. He didn't seem at all bothered by their increasingly frequent squabbling, so long as she actually did all the filing and he always won. And he really was exceptionally intelligent, attractive, and eloquent.

And since "all the filing" took about twenty minutes (which made the state of his filing cabinet when she'd first arrived more than a little ridiculous) she didn't even really have to do any work, just follow him around and either annoy him or converse with him, depending on the mood he was in.

She learned a lot about Banora, with its weird apples, and his apple juice business, which was apparently a real thing. Also a whole host of embarrassing stories about Angeal, ninety percent of which she was sure were actually stories about stupid things Genesis had done and either blamed on Angeal or just altered the facts for her benefit. She did not learn anything about his parents or Doctor Hollander, which was interesting all on its own.

And then there was the day when Zack came bouncing in with a shy little shadow, who practically melted into the floor when he realized that he was being introduced to Angeal, Genesis and _the Sephiroth_. Eve let him stutter for a bit before sweeping in to rescue him.

"Hey little brother!" she exclaimed, pouncing on him and knocking him over. It occurred to her that this could be super awkward if Vincent hadn't actually been reading her letters or interacting with him, but naturally not until after she'd already gone and made an idiot of herself.

Fortunately, Vincent had apparently been doing both, because Cloud awkwardly patted her shoulder and returned her greeting with a quiet "hey, sis."

She fielded Zack's demands for why he hadn't known about this relationship with ease, letting Cloud breathe a little while she surreptitiously examined him. He was so small and…delicate-looking, it was hard to believe that he might grow up to be a great warrior, even without Hojo's interference.

Though if she had anything to say about it, he would never be an experiment OR a WEAPON.

And, bless him, his hair was totally outrageous, overwhelming his small face and adding almost half a foot to his height.

They visited for awhile, Cloud mostly sitting quietly and gawking at all the important people (and the weird secretary pretending to be his sister) before Zack decided it was time to head for the mess.

On the way out, Cloud caught her arm.

"Congratulations, cadet," she said quietly.

He flushed adorably. "Thanks," he said, just as quietly. "And thank you for sending me a teacher; some of the strengthening exercises really helped me get into the program."

"Well, better you than me," Eve said with a little laugh. She was sure that the others could hear this little conversation, but they'd moved away to give the "siblings" the illusion of privacy. "And thanks for—you know—everything."

Cloud shrugged. "It was a small favor. Oh, and he asked me to tell you that 'it wasn't there.' He said you'd know what that meant."

Eve's smile became a little strained. "I do—thanks for telling me, Cloud."

"Can—can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Cloud, what is it?"

"Why? Why go to all this trouble for me?"

"Oh, that's an easy one. Because I think you're worth it."

"Whoa, you're all decked out. Sword and everything. What's up?"

"I've been assigned a mission. Finally."

"Oh." She was momentarily distracted by Genesis adjusting one of his boots. "Say, can I come?"

"Cadet, this is not a camping trip, it is a mission to investigate the existence of potentially deadly monsters."

"I know that, sir. I'm sure whatever it is you can handle it. Besides, I'm very good at hiding like a coward and not getting in the way of other people kicking ass."

"…you have a lot of experience at this?"

"Sadly, yes. You know that I was a _cook_ in the war, right? I'm worse than useless in a fight. Though I did kill a zombie once. Well, maybe not kill. I fought a zombie, and I didn't die, so that's basically like winning."

"Cadet…"

"I could carry stuff. Like, tents, or something. Or I could cook. Possibly. So long as it's not something you intend to actually eat."

"Cadet."

"I could take the mission notes for you."

"…fine, you can come."

"Yay!"

"I'm going to regret this, aren't I. And don't you dare get killed; I don't want to have to go back to Wutai."

"I will try to remember that my gruesome death might put a damper in your travel plans."

"Cadet…"

"Yes, sir, I won't do anything rash."

_Dear Awesome-Traveling-Companion-I-Totally-Underappreciated,_

_I had an exciting near-death experience this week. I basically annoyed my boss into letting me tag along on a mission, which was supposed to be a routine investigation of a potentially dangerous wolf pack._

_Note "supposed to be" above._

_What it turned out to be was a four day hunt for a tribe of mako-enhanced wolf-marlboro hybrids—imagine a regular Marlboro, but with fur and a set of fangs on the end of each tentacle. Oh, and legs. Half the time we weren't sure who was the hunter and who was the huntee, and I spent most of the time hiding in trees calling for more back-up._

_Fun times._

_In other news, how does anyone not think Hojo is bat-shit insane? Like, seriously. Buy a clue, people._

_Did we run into weird shit like this on our little cross-country adventure? Because if so, I totally did not give you enough credit for single-handedly protecting us across two continents._

_Ran into Cloud awhile ago. Thanks for that, by the way. He's a good kid, isn't he?_

_And he tattled on you—I know you read my letters now._

_So I'll be expecting answers to all my questions when we see each other again._

_My question this month is: what size shoe do you wear?_

_And I have absolutely no ulterior motives behind this question. I'm just curious._

_Also, how do you feel about un-pointy boots? Would you prefer black or red? _

_(Hypothetically)_

_Well, I have to go get yelled at for putting myself in danger. I think my getting out and going on missions is officially banned._

_Your miserably desk-bound partner-in-crime-to-be_

"Cadet, take this up to Commander Tseng's office."

"Commander Tseng? As in, the Turks? I thought I wasn't allowed to go on dangerous missions anymore, sir."

"Hilarious."

"Isn't this what email is for?"

"Cadet…"

"Already gone, sir."

Tseng's office, it turned out, was hard to find. For some not-entirely-unjustified reason, once the various people she'd questioned realized that her business was somehow connected to the Turks, they suddenly remembered something they urgently needed to take care of far away from her.

Justified, perhaps, but not at all helpful.

Which was why she all but tackled Reno to the ground when she spied him in the hall.

"Gah!" he shouted as they went down.

"Uh, sorry," she said, wondering if it was too late to pretend that she'd just tripped somehow. Probably. "Do you know where Commander Tseng's office is?"

"Why would I know that?"

Eve took a moment to look at what Reno was wearing; standard cadet fatigues. Right. Oops.

"Well—" you look like a Turk is so out "—didn't the Commander beat you up once before you were a cadet?" Maybe that wasn't actually how that played out…

"He did not _beat me up_," Reno protested, all offended dignity despite his current position sprawled on the floor in the middle of the hallway.

Eve settled comfortably against the wall. "I know you did something—the sergeant was trying to kick you out, and you kept insisting that half push-ups still counted if he never said anything about it…"

"Oh, you were there for that?"

"Yes! And then Commander Tseng came and dragged you off for disturbing the peace and pissing him off, or whatever. So, office?"

"I still don't see why I should give up my free time to show you around the building. I don't even know you. And unless they changed the uniform significantly in the last hour—a move that I support wholeheartedly by the way—you obviously didn't make it far in SOLDIER."

She tugged her skirt a little further down her legs and fought not to get annoyed. What could you really expect from Reno? "Somehow, I doubt that scenario ended in you apologizing contritely and promising never to do it again."

He gave her a look that was both sullen and defiant, which she chose to interpret as "of course not."

"So, now you have a legitimate reason to go irritate him again. It's not like you see him every day, lowly cadet that you are. It'll be fun."

They were probably the only two people in the building who might classify purposely antagonizing the head of the Turks as 'fun.' "What 'legitimate reason,'" he asked suspiciously. "So far all you've done is run me down in the corridor."

She brandished her memo. "I'm carrying official correspondence from the SOLDIER offices."

He looked skeptical.

"Seriously!"

"Right."

"Here, smell it." She shoved the memo in his face.

"Gah! Why?"

"See, it smells just like Commander Rhapsodos' cologne. I just came from his office."

"Why the hell would I know what his _cologne_ smells like! You—you know what, fine. Obviously, if I ever want to get back to enjoying my day off, I should just show you where it is."

"Thanks!" she said brightly, willing to be magnanimous now that she'd clearly won.

"Yeah, whatever. Why are you carrying that memo? Don't they have email for that?"

"Shut up."

The office turned out to be only one floor up, which made Reno's little hissy fit about showing her the way even more annoying, but she got her own back when Tseng's secretary refused to let Reno into her office, let alone the Turk Commander's. She only just managed to refrain from sticking her tongue out at him over her shoulder, but that would have been childish.

Plus, there were probably cameras everywhere in here.

She waited patiently while the secretary buzzed her in, then entered the office.

ShinRa obviously was not very big on creativity, because the office looked very much like every other office she'd seen so far (except the President's, but technically she had not actually seen that yet, as such). Big desk, filing cabinets, a few sick-looking plants, boring paint, boring carpet—there were even signs of fighting in here.

"Yes?"

Tseng looked very impressive behind his desk, and it reminded Eve that this was Tseng before whatever shreds of conscience he grew around the whole execution of Zack situation. Though, surely he knew Aerith by now…

"Did you want something?"

Focus, Eve. "Yes, I have a delivery from Commander Rhapsodos." She offered him the memo, which was about three lines long.

Tseng raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't he just email me?"

Eve's eye twitched, but she refrained from saying anything stupid. "I don't know, sir. Probably he just wanted me to go away for awhile." Okay, mostly refrained.

Fortunately he seemed amused. If her stupid antics were really this amusing, everyone in ShinRa really needed to get out and get a hobby or something. "Very well, Miss…?"

Eve was actually a little surprised that the Turks didn't have a twenty-page file on her, what with the whole Leviathan/Ending the Wutai War Incident. "Cadet, actually. I think. Cadet Evelyn Strife, sir."

"Ah."

He'd clearly known _something_ about her, because there was a wealth of unspoken knowledge in that monosyllabic utterance.

Eve prided herself on her interpretation of monosyllabic non-answers. Maybe it was a Turk thing?

"The President was most displeased with your participation in a mission," he commented offhandedly. Or as offhanded as any Turk ever said anything.

"I heard, sir, and I promise never to do it again, sir," Eve said earnestly. Though privately she thought that it was a little unclassy of President ShinRa not to even lecture her in person—she really had very little to do with the treaty beyond her role as the paper it was written on, but it was the principle of the thing.

Plus, the President would have been way less scary than Sephiroth as the deliverer of that particular lecture.

"Hmm. I see that your brother recently joined the cadet ranks, as well."

Okay, now that was a little ominous. She expected they would know stuff about her, but why should they care about Cloud? This was not an angle of the whole pretend-siblings game that she had considered. "Uh, yes sir." She tried not to look as intimidated as she felt.

"Relax, cadet." And obviously failed. "Both your files have been appropriately handled."

Wait, what? "Wait, what? Sir?"

He looked at her sharply. Fantastic, now he was suspicious. It would be damn embarrassing if she failed in her quest for world peace because of some stupid memo delivery. "Your file, cadet. It indicates that you have familial ties with the Turks."

"It does? Oh. Oh!"

Now Tseng was giving her a one hundred percent justified look of pure skepticism.

Damage control. Stick to the truth as much as possible. "Well, I don't know about _familial_ ties, sir. I just can't believe—why didn't he say something! I ran into a member of the Turks passing through my hometown, and he was generous enough to escort me to Midgar for training, and help my brother get ready for the trials. We were, uh, living together, for a bit. I had _no idea_ he was going to put it in my file, though. Wow."

"I see." Left unspoken was the 'and I can see why, given how indiscreet and stupid you are' as well as 'what would any sensible Turk see in a babbling idiot like you anyway.' Or maybe she was just projecting.

Nevertheless, she felt a little warm glow of happiness inside. She'd basically forced herself into Vincent's quiet existence and bullied him into taking care of her, so it was nice to hear that he may not have _entirely_ resented her interference. This little move on his part was probably the reason her background hadn't been investigated more closely, and her admittedly not that discreet letters not opened and examined. And he really didn't have to read any of her letters or help Cloud or any of it—it was all just her spur of the moment efforts to convince him not to molder away in his coffin for all eternity. Plus, the man really was almost frighteningly competent, and she didn't want this venture to sink because her own skills were subpar.

And while she was off in her own little world, she was still in the office of the Turk Commander, full of dangerous and highly classified company information, and totally helpless to defend herself in an emergency.

"Right then. Well, thank you, sir. I'll, uh, let him know you got the message. I should—go back to work now."

And she fled.

Fortunately for her sanity, real work arrived shortly after that.

"So, what is all of this, then?" she asked warily, as crate after crate of files were wheeled into Genesis' office, Sephiroth's office, the room with all the secretarial desks, and the hallway leading to the elevator and staircase.

"Paperwork from the war," Genesis supplied, eyeing the whole collection with extreme distaste.

"Oh. Why is it only just getting here?"

"Who only knows."

Sephiroth, who managed to make wading through paperwork look graceful, came up and joined the conversation. "Cadet."

"Yes, sir?"

"Normally, this…collection…would be handled by temporary clerks, but since you are apparently hand-delivering interdepartmental memos lately, perhaps filing will keep you busy for a time."

Eve looked out over the sea of paper. "Uh, of course, sir." Sometimes she felt like they were just making shit up to keep her occupied and out of danger. But even in a world where they really were out to get you, staging a war to give her busywork was probably a little paranoid. Deliberately misplacing it for a time, on the other hand…

"I'll send Zack up with another cabinet," Sephiroth said as he headed back for his office, leaving Eve and Genesis staring after him.

"So—did he actually mean that, or does he just have a really obscure sense of humor?" Eve asked finally.

"I have no idea."


	8. Cosplay and Tseng

In defiance of all efforts by ShinRa executives, Eve still managed to get herself in trouble filing paperwork.

Well, to be strictly fair, it was traveling to the copy room in order to duplicate the latest bunch of files that almost proved her undoing.

She was innocently traveling from the barracks to the Tower, clutching a half-empty box, when she spied some weird people hovering around the entrance to the barracks. Back in her own world, she would have called them LARPers. They were actually out in public with floor-length capes, fake-looking weapons and some truly bizarre wigs, practically bursting with youthful enthusiasm. Was it still weird in a world where people actually did fight with swords and spears and such?

Well, yes. Yes it was.

Accordingly, she approached with caution.

"Can I help you?" she asked, a little uncertainly.

Upon closer examination, the "capes" were more like cloaks, and concealed what she very much feared was an imitation-SOLDIER uniform. And some of these weapons bore more than a passing resemblance to the signature weapons of her boss and his comrades.

Eve was beginning to second-guess the wisdom in approaching these people.

The crowd parted to let her reveal a very small, very slender girl with extremely disproportionate…feminine assets. She had a large binder in hand, which was overflowing with newspaper clippings and pictures of various high-ranking SOLDIERs. She was smiling the smile of a Twilight fan at the midnight opening hyped up on her first ever cup of coffee.

Eve was now beyond second-guessing and well into 'where the hell are the emergency exits.'

"Did you just come out of the barracks?" the girl-child chirped.

"Yes?" Eve answered, warily. This was starting to bear an eerie and entirely unexpected resemblance to her conversation with Tseng. Obviously he wasn't quite _this_ feminine, or…peppy, but a similar sense of impending doom hung over the conversation. What had worked with Tseng, again? Honesty, and creeping away as quickly as possible.

"Oh. My. Gawd! Are you a cadet? Were you in Wutai? Do you know—" conspiratorial wink, exaggerated whisper "—General Sephiroth?" Whoever it was released an ear-piercing squeal, hugging her sides and positively writhing in her excitement.

Eve was thoroughly humiliated for every fangirl thing she had ever done in her life. She wanted nothing more than to go home, curl up on her bunk, and remind herself that she in no way resembled this lunatic. "Uh, yes. And yes. And…barely. I've seen him, you know, in passing. Once or twice." Forget honesty!

The girl pounced on her, sending the crate flying off into the wall somewhere and scattering papers everywhere.

"Um, that was kind of important…"

"Sit sit sit sit sit!"

Eve sat.

"Not _on the ground_ obviously! We're putting on a play!"

Eve allowed herself to be dragged to a set of makeshift benches she had not previously noticed, trying to process the horror. A whole cadre of lunatics—dressed as SOLDIERs—putting on a play—in front of the barracks—in some sort of misguided obsessed fan-worship—

"Oh god. This is the side the window is on. The General might actually see this."

"REALLY?" her new shadow screamed in her ear. "YOU'VE BEEN IN HIS OFFICE?"

"Um, no. I…heard about it. In the cafeteria. Mess. It was a long time ago," Eve babbled. This was the most embarrassing experience of her entire life, and there were so very many to choose from. She'd been to a few conventions in her time and even…on occasion…and in a very dignified and respectful manner…_might_ have cosplayed once or twice. But this was _insanity_. What was with these people? The men themselves were right nearby!

"…all the fanclubs together, but most of them just want to publish newsletters and send gifts and stuff, but _we_ are going to show them how much we _really_ appreciate them…" the girl was saying, talking nonstop now without seeming to draw breath. She shepherded the "SOLDIERs" into various pre-arranged positions while she went on and on, leaving Eve cringing alone on the bench as a crowd of curious interns and execs began to arrive, wondering what all the fuss was about. Run while you still can, she urged them mentally.

Giving the…troop…as much credit as she could under the circumstances, Eve was forced to admit that the costumes weren't all _that_ bad, really. She was just used to cosplay costumes—in pictures!—being much more…high quality. But, fanclubs notwithstanding, it was even less justifiable to be cosplaying as people who _actually existed_ so presumably there were fewer businesses willing to sell genuine imitation costumes. The slightly more adequate than she'd previously given credit for costumes, however, could do nothing to redeem this whole venture. If any of the SOLDIERs saw this, let alone the General, they were going to flip out. And if anyone she knew saw her at this or found about her presence here, she was going to run straight back to Nibelheim and lock herself in a coffin for a few decades.

She'd heard that wasn't a bad way to while away some time.

"Yo, crazy chick!"

She closed her eyes. Naturally. "Hey Reno."

"What's going on?"

"I don't know, because I'm not here."

"You're not here."

"That's right."

"So…maybe I should 'not be here' too?"

"That would be wise. So I imagine that's not what you're going to do."

He plunked down on the bench beside her. "Right in one, yo. So seriously, what's up?"

"If I don't acknowledge it, will it go away?"

"You really are one crazy chick."

They sat in more-or-less comfortable silence as the collection of fanclub rejects ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, or people who are _about_ to have their heads cut off.

Out of the corner of her eye, Eve could see Reno studying the activity and attempting to decipher its nature. She commiserated with his confusion; how she wished that she'd just remained confused.

"Hey, isn't that the head of the Silver Elite?"

Her head snapped around. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

He practically fell off the bench in alarm. "Yo, what's your problem?"

"Reno. Listen to me very carefully. These people are putting on a play. They are acting out what I can only assume is the Wutai War, starring everyone's favorite SOLDIERs. That—" she pointed "—is the window belonging to a certain leader of SOLDIER."

Reno looked at the ragged coats, drooping weapons, and manic grins around him. "We should go," he said, very serious.

"You think? The Nazi over there won't let me leave."

"What's a Nazi?"

"Never mind; not important. Okay, here's the plan. You go over there and create a distraction; I suggest announcing that you shook the G-E-N-E-R-A-L's hand once; that should keep them occupied."

"Is there some reason you spelled that out?"

"I think these people are insane. Also, they probably can't read, so it's as good as code."

"What does that have to do with spelling 'general?'"

"OH MY GAWD!" Nazi-fangirl squealed, tackling Reno off the bench.

Not quite the distraction she'd had planned, but Reno was known for his improv skills. Eve manfully snuck away, abandoning Reno to his fate. She almost made it, too.

"Hey!" Reno yelled. "Aren't you Commander Rhapsodos' secretary?"

Shit.

She ran for it.

Only to be brought to the ground by a gaggle of idiots.

Eve stoically ignored all the questions as she was manhandled back to the bench, glaring death at a smirking Reno. "Don't you have babies to eat, or something?" she asked irritably.

"Coming from the person who shamelessly threw me to the wolves."

"Not my fault you can't keep your stupid mouth shut."

"Never leave a man behind, yo."

"Ah-hem. If I could have everyone's attention…"

"Oh god, it's starting."

"Just shoot me now."

"I could do that."

"Shut up, Reno."

It wasn't as bad as she'd thought it would be.

But only because it was worse.

Ten-year-old fanfiction writers could come up with better material than this. There were Lord of the Rings self-insertion/Pokémon crossovers that were better than this. There were—

"Urgh," Reno said, wincing, as "Sephiroth" tripped over his sword.

"I can't decide if it's worse when they are just completely fail, or when they manage an approximation that comes across as pitiful mockery," Eve whispered.

She and Reno were front and center on the benches, but quite a crowd had gathered as the performance tripped (sometime literally) painfully onward. Some people were appropriately horrified, but altogether too many of them seemed to actually be _enjoying_ this travesty, cheering whenever a character did something recognizable.

Angeal's character seemed to be coming across mostly intact, but it was very fortunate for all concerned that Genesis couldn't hear his counterpart butchering _Loveless_ as he tottered about in obscenely high heels. Having spent the last several months working with the man, Eve couldn't imagine where they'd gotten that idea from. He did have a tendency to prop his feet on the nearest desk, chair, or secretary's head, but he still wore the standard-issue first-class footwear.

Not that their interpretation of Genesis' shoes should be at the top of her priority list.

And then there was Sephiroth. Just—no.

"How could anyone possibly have thought this was a good idea?" Reno asked.

"Was that a rhetorical question?"

"I'm serious. They could not possibly have done anything to make this worse."

"Well, I don't know about _that._"

Reno raised an incredulous eyebrow. So unfair!

"I'm serious. It could definitely be worse."

"Oh? How?"

"Well," she said practically, "no one is making out. Yet."

Reno goggled.

"And, of course, none of them are actually here."

At the edges of her consciousness, Eve heard something. It wasn't quite a sound; it was a silence. The kind of silence that guilt-happy idiots wrapped themselves in while they hid in coffins. The kind of silence (undeservedly!) used to express disbelief with her non-existent skills. The kind of silence that said that an incredibly pissed-off General of SOLDIER had finally discovered what all the commotion was about.

"Don't make any sudden movements," Eve whispered.

"Right with you, yo."

"Totally unacceptable!" Lazard thundered.

Huh, Eve thought. He is not anything like what I expected. Doesn't look like Rufus at all.

"What do you two have to say for yourselves?"

Also, louder.

Reno looked at her. She looked at Reno. They both looked at Tseng. Why was he here anyway? Reno wasn't a Turk yet, and she hopefully was not in the kind of danger that would cause the super-secret Turk solidarity bond or whatever to kick in. Or for Lazard to think that she might suddenly need to be assassinated.

It was entirely possible that the President had _no idea_ what he was doing when he created the Turks.

Rufus had a much better idea making himself a part of the team, as it were.

"Well!"

Right. Dressing-down. She looked at Reno again. He shrugged. Coward, she mouthed.

"Please, Director," she said meekly, "Reno and I had nothing to do with that—thing. I was just going to copy some files, and they accosted me."

"Putting aside for the moment that you, a SOLDIER cadet, were _accosted_ by bunch of _fangirls_, where are these files now?"

She winced. "I, uh, I lost them."

"So your defense is that you misplaced critical, classified military documents?"

"With all due respect, sir, the General completely destroyed the stage, the benches, and most of the wall. Maybe it's somewhere in the debris?"

"Don't be pert, cadet."

"Sorry, sir. The woman in charge—I never did quite catch her name—sat me on the bench and badgered me for every detail of every time I'd seen the Unholy Trinity—"

"The WHAT!" Sephiroth spoke up for the first time.

"Sorry, she, uh, that was how she referred to the three of you," Eve lied through her teeth.

"Moving on…" Director Lazard said impatiently.

"And then Reno happened along, and he was also captured—"

"Another SOLDIER cadet, you mean, this one active, against a dozen women and three civilian men in costumes."

"—and we were made to sit and watch. We would have gone and gotten help if we could, sir, but there were plenty of other people around who were perfectly free to do so. Honestly, sir, we would have left if we could! That was just…embarrassing."

"Cadets, even assuming that you were somehow—physically restrained—that is not the reason you are here today, at this disciplinary hearing."

"I'm very sorry about the files sir, and I promise I'll look for them straightaway. And truly, sir, Reno had nothing to do with that. I lost the crate long before he got there."

"Cadet Strife, this is not about the files! Though you _will_ be looking for those this evening. This is about sharing SOLDIER secrets with civilians."

Eve and Reno exchanged a look. She let Reno field this one.

"Secrets, sir?" he asked. Eve was secretly impressed. She didn't know Reno knew the word 'sir.'

"Yes!" Lazard slapped the desk in front of him, resulting in an impressive noise that made both cadets jump. This time, Eve was honestly at a loss as to what he was referring to.

"I'm sorry, sir," she began tentatively, "but what exactly do you think we did?"

"Where to begin, is a better question, cadet. Even if you didn't let those people on ShinRa property—and I have yet to see any evidence of that—I expect a certain level of decorum from _all_ SOLDIER cadets, especially when it comes to gossiping about their commanding officers.

The waves of hostility from said commanding officers—a direction Eve hadn't dared to look since the beginning of this lovely little meeting—increased. She shrank a bit in her seat.

"Hold on," Reno said, sounding about as alarmed as she felt. "I don't even _know_ any gossip about the commanding officers. I'm just a cadet! This is the first time I've even seen them in person!"

"Yet you knew of Cadet Strife's unique position?" Lazard prompted, no quarter in his tone.

"Yeah, because she _told_ me. Practically jumped me in the hall because she thought I knew where Ts—Commander Tseng's office was. That's it! Today was only the second time I'd ever seen her!"

"Technically it was the third," Eve muttered.

"Shut up," he shot back.

The authority-types were exchanging significant looks.

"Look," Reno broke in, sounding a little desperate now, "we weren't that far from the Commander Tseng's office; the whole encounter is probably on a security camera somewhere. It was clearly a first meeting, we didn't exchange gossip, and I wasn't even allowed in the room! We talked for maybe four minutes! That's it!"

Lazard settled back in his seat, steepling his fingers together. "As it happens, cadet, we do have part of that exchange on tape. Commander Tseng was good enough to retrieve it for us. Aside from Cadet Strife's attempt to verify her message's authenticity by _smell_— " Eve cringed a little more "—nothing suspicious was said. That time." He let Reno squirm for a little longer. "You are excused into Commander Tseng's custody."

"Whaa…?" Reno protested as Tseng hustled him out the door.

When they were finally out of earshot, Eve felt all eyes focus on her.

"You," Lazard said ominously.

Perversely, Eve was starting to get annoyed. This being denied critical information pertaining to herself was really just as frustrating as it was in books. She mentally apologized to every fantasy hero who she'd hated for resenting and ignoring the close-mouthed old man who guided them.

"I still don't understand," Lazard was saying, "how a first year _cook_ ended up in Lord Godo's palace, assuring a peace treaty between our own ShinRa Inc. and Wutai, but here you are and there is the evidence of the treaty. The President wanted to place you in the protective custody of the Turks—" Eve blanched; was that code for prison? test subjecthood? target practice? "—but both Commander Hewley and Commander Tseng vouched for you." Wow, this Turk solidarity thing was no joke. "So we gave you a position. File a few papers under the watchful eye of our three most powerful SOLDIERs; you get a measure of freedom, and you're as safe as we can possibly make you." Well that explained a few things about her current career. "And then what do I hear?" He banged the table again. "Disrupting everyone's work—"

"I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing!"

"—spilling coffee on critical war documents—"

"That was…someone else."

"—sending the General to medical for _three days_—"

"How was I supposed to know he's allergic to cats? Rufus has one!"

"—tampering with delicate equipment—"

"I don't remember doing that…"

"—smashing a window—"

"That was not my fault! _I_ wasn't carrying that filing cabinet!"

"—sneaking out on missions—"

"Okay, that was kind of dumb."

"—_losing_ sensitive paperwork—"

"I didn't see anyone else sticking around when the real swords showed up…"

"—and now this disgraceful, childish—"

"Just stop it!" Eve jumped to her feet. Something—probably shock—caused him to actually heed her. "Please, sir, I get the picture. I didn't even _do_ half of that stuff, and as to what I _did_ do, if someone had just _told_ me that I was supposed to be cooling my heels being guarded all day then I wouldn't have done it!" Probably. She still might have tried to sneak out on a mission. "I thought I was actually supposed to be working! I was just trying to figure out what was expected of me, and to do it!"

"I'm not finished yet!" she exclaimed, probably unwisely, when the Director opened his mouth to interject. "And I had _absolutely nothing_ to do with that travesty outside. At all! The whole time I wished dearly that I was far, far away. Galaxies away. Universes away! What do I need to say so you'll believe me?"

"Cadet Strife, sit down!" the Director said sharply. She sat. "I'm not sure you appreciate the gravity of your situation, Cadet."

Passion spent for the moment, Eve stared at her shoes. She took a few deep, calming breaths. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry for shouting, sir. I give you my word that I haven't been spreading private, personal information about anyone to anyone. I…I don't know what else I can do to convince you that I'm telling the truth. Please; tell me what you'll believe, and I'll say it."

Lazard gave her a long, indecipherable look. "Hmm."

Okay… Eve fidgeted in her seat. What was that supposed to mean.

Her question was answered in part when Tseng reappeared—carrying a syringe.

She couldn't help a quick, instinctive flinch. Oh god, oh god, there're feeding me to Hojo, she gibbered mentally, thoughts spinning around in circles. Get a grip! she scolded herself. Hojo isn't here, that doesn't look a thing like mako, and Lazard isn't stupid enough to entrust Hojo with anything valuable and breakable—like a peace treaty that needed to breathe.

Once she could think again, she noticed that her obvious panic seemed to have done more than any of her protests to convince the room's occupants that she was some underhanded, greedy little opportunist.

Probably because some of them could empathize. Cough, Lazard, cough.

Despite her mental pep talk, she couldn't quite keep the slightest waver out of her voice as she asked, "So, what's that, then?"

"This is something used by the Turks for interrogating prisoners," Lazard exclaimed, raising an eyebrow when she flinched again.

Oh yeah, very subtle, no one's going to suspect _you're_ hiding something, she berated herself.

"It will induce you to tell the truth," he continued.

"Does it hurt?"

He glanced at Tseng. "It does not. However, this formula has only been approved for prisoners, which you are not. It will be only be used if you give your consent."

So it was like the Leviathan thing all over again, but with less imminent danger of drowning. How did she get herself into these situations? "Okay," she said, relieved. "That doesn't sound so bad."

Lazard frowned when Tseng suddenly spoke up. "That is not precisely what it does. It does encourage you to tell the truth, but it does so by removing many of the barriers between thought and speech, encouraging you to say whatever is on your mind without taking the time to edit it into what you think we want to hear."

Eve stiffened in her seat. "Oh, I don't think that's a good idea."

"Is that a confession?" Lazard asked sternly.

This. Is. So. Not. Fair.

"The Director will limit his questions to those related to the investigation at hand," Tseng volunteered. "You will not be interrogated about your personal life or opinions about ShinRa personnel or business practices."

"Except as they relate to the matter at hand," Lazard added, frowning more strongly. "Really, Tseng."

Eve felt a bit ashamed that she hadn't even thought of all the secrets she needed to protect until Tseng mentioned them. She was too caught up in the horror of saying whatever came to mind. "I really think this is not a good idea," she said again.

Lazard's stern look did not waver.

She sighed. Loudly. "Very well, sir. Is it entirely necessary for everyone to be here?"

"Cadet, this is an investigation, not a game."

"Yes, sir," she said, glumly. "I consent." It was a good thing she'd gotten so much practice at being humiliated lately.

Tseng approached and she offered her arm. She was warmed to see that he seemed to be discreetly checking for previous injection marks. Seems he'd assessed her major overreaction to the sight of needles and come to exactly the right conclusion. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about his apparent familiarity with people traumatized by over-exposure to mako treatments, but his concern was nice all the same. 'Not me,' she mouthed, after angling her head to keep anyone else from seeing. He nodded, and gave her the shot.

She sat back and took stock of how she was feeling. Not at all different. Huh.

"Cadet Strife."

"Yes, sir?"

"Have you been working as Commander Rhapsodos' secretary for the last few months?"

"I think so."

"…you think so?"

"Yes."

"You have to ask her a more specific question, Lazard."

"Why do you think so?"

"That was not a specific question—"

"I was a secretary once," Eve supplied helpfully. "I was helping my mom in her office when I was in school so I could have Subway for lunch instead of her homemade sandwiches because I really just wanted cheese and lettuce and bread but she kept insisting that I needed to have more meat so she put _sausage_ on it and who even eats sausages except sometimes with breakfast wrapped up in pancakes? So I answered the phone and sent emails and fed the fish and vacuumed and delivered memos and checked the mail and found a lost retainer and—"

"Thank you, Cadet, I think I get the picture."

"I told you it had to be a specific question."

"Thank you, Commander, I'll keep that in mind."

"—and here there aren't any fish or retainers or sausages or vacuums but I did deliver a memo one time and I tried to get a phone but no one would give me anything in supply except for a few labels this one time but I think Sephiroth might have said something to them and, you know, labels, not that big a deal, but I _tried_ to be a good secretary—"

"She's not going to stop, is she?"

"Not until she feels that she'd answered the question, Director. Though I have to say, I've never seen the formula work quite this well before."

Genesis joined the conversation for the first time with a derisive snort. "Obviously you don't know Cadet Strife very well, then. This is what she's normally like."

"Genesis," Angeal said warningly.

"Well, maybe not _quite_ this bad…"

"—and I tried to steal Mohawk's computer because really, what can he even see under all that hair, but I tripped over the trashbin and he saw me so that was out, and I did do some filing even if I made a mess but most of the time I just sit around and irritate everyone so really I don't think that's part of the official job description of a ShinRa secretary!" Eve gasped for breath. Once she'd stopped talking, everything that she'd been going on about registered in her conscious mind. Her eyes widened. This was going to be terrible.

"Er, right then," Lazard said, sounding a little intimidated in spite of himself.

"Maybe I should handle the questioning," Tseng interjected smoothly.

"This is my investigation," Lazard snapped, rallying, and Eve let her shoulders slump a little. She was growing less and less impressed with Lazard. No wonder he got caught. "Now, Cadet." He paused, thinking. "Do you know personal information about any of the people in this room, yes or no?"

"Yes."

"…besides yourself, I mean."

"Yes."

"Like wh—"

"Don't ask that!" everyone shouted at once, except Lazard himself.

"Right. Sorry. Have you ever communicated any of this private information to anyone, yes or no?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Lazard!"

Now that she knew what to expect, Eve was a little more aware of her words, though she couldn't seem to keep them from spilling out of her mouth. "I told Commander Rhapsodos that he had a beautiful voice and I told him that Commander Hewley was upset about the number of cadets in the front line and I told all the other secretaries that the General is allergic to cats and also two nurses and a doctor and I told—"

"Nice going."

"—and I told the General that the reason I kept borrowing files was because Commander Rhapsodos kept spilling coffee on his copies—"

"Hey, I told you not to tell him that."

"Wait, that was you?"

"Tseng, would you please do something about this?"

"Are you sure, Director? I wouldn't want to interrupt your interrogation…"

"Tseng…"

"—and I told Reno that the scent on the memo was Commander Rhapsodos' cologne—" She watched as Tseng settled himself directly in front of her, making eye contact and ignoring her rambling monologue.

"Look at me, Cadet. That is enough. Thank you for answering the question."

It was no good, she couldn't seem to shut it off. All that happened was that she had a little more awareness of what transgression she was about to confess to next. As she began to wind down with her commenting on the quirks of one SOLDIER to the others, she felt her memory stretching back to her communications with a certain coffin-dwelling individual. "_Sephiroth's a good kid, how does no one see that Hojo is crazy, experiments under the No. 1 Reactor…"_

Her eyes went wide, and Tseng must have gotten the message because the next thing she knew her head was ringing, she was seeing stars, and her mouth was mercifully shut.

She tuned back into reality in time to hear Lazard berating Tseng. "Did you really have to slap her so hard?"

"It wouldn't have been necessary at all if you would just listen to me. This is not a formula to be used lightly. Ask her what you want to know and let her sleep it off."

"I'm still not clear on exactly what I've done and can we get to the sleeping off part now, thanks muchly?" Eve said. She was as surprised as anyone by her unexpected comment.

"This is ridiculous; obviously she is particularly susceptible. Finish this, Director."

"Were you responsible for the performance this afternoon outside the barracks?"

"NO!" Eve screamed, almost startling herself out of her seat.

"Well, that was pretty unambiguous," Genesis said wryly.

"Tell me what happened."

She managed to narrate her adventure with the files, the crazy woman, and the farce of a play without humiliating herself _too_ much, though she cringed a few times at the slurs against the various participants. Eventually, however, Lazard seemed satisfied that she hadn't been leaking information to the fan clubs, and she hadn't had anything to do with…well…"that piece of shit" was probably the most generous appellation that she offered.

His questions and her commentary began winding down.

"One more thing."

Eve didn't think hers was the only heart to sink a little at those words.

"I'm still not clear on the other cadet's role in all of this. How was he involved, exactly?"

"I don't remember everything perfectly because I was kind of drowning in horror but he was walking and he saw me and I think he was mad about my pouncing him in the corridor but really it's not everyone who mouths off to Tseng and even if he didn't remember me it wasn't something I was going to forget and I told him I wasn't there but he was an idiot so I tricked him into saying 'general' which was kind of mean but totally deserved and he went down and I tried to sneak off but he announced to the whole world that I was working for Commander Rhapsodos and then I got tackled too and they sat us on the benches and that bastard thought it was hilarious until I pointed out that the General could probably see us from his window and then _it_ began and oh god they _weren't doing it right_ and you would not believe the fighting stances, the clothes, the _dialogue_ it was like watching babies drown or something it was that awful and I told Reno that I would have done a way better job so you know I had nothing to do with this and he didn't believe me but I told him that obviously if _I_ had been in charge there would have been way more sex."

Dead. Silence.

"Also, I hate you, and can I please go and hide now?"

_Dear Vincent,_

_You could have just told me that no one was going to be opening my mail with that super-secret Turk solidarity thing you have going. If I didn't know better I'd say you were developing a sense of humor regarding my little notes._

_Close call recently. I'm now _positive_ that the President had _no idea_ what he was doing when he created the Turks. I was interrogated with some truth serum or something last week and Tseng sat there and let me conceal information and didn't even blink an eye._

_But don't worry, the only thing to suffer was my pride. You and everyone else's secrets are still locked away in my head, unlikely to go anywhere since I haven't left my room except to eat for five days. _

_And you can scratch Lazard off the list (I know you read it). My vengeance shall burn eternally._

_Or at least until everyone forgets about this "interrogation." The only good thing is that everyone is too busy mocking me for my pornographic imagination to remember that I was originally in a great deal of trouble._

_If you find yourself at loose ends out there, you could always send a letter _back_ you know. I'm sure your vastly superior sneakiness skill is up to a quick hello without revealing anything incriminating._

_It's not healthy to hide out alone, you know._

…_and I realize that I probably shouldn't be saying that right now, what with my being in hiding, but I can't stress enough the extent of my humiliation._

_Fine, I'll go to work on Monday._

_It might be time for a bit of meddling._

_And don't make that face. I've got everything under control._

_Really._

_Eve_

"So are you sure you're allowed out of the Tower?"

"Okay, the last time was a mission, which is completely different from just going out for food in the city."

"Uh huh."

"People do that all the time, without incident."

"Right."

"I really don't see the problem."

"So when you asked Commander Rhapsodos if you could go out, you mentioned to him that you were going under the Plate?"

"Well, not in so many words."

"That's what I thought."

"Zack, I have you and Cloud to protect me, right?"

"I'd better not get in trouble for this."

"You won't."

"Right, because you never get in trouble."

"Just shut it. Cloud's never been below-Plate, have you little brother?"

"Uh…no."

"See? He needs to get out more!"

"Hey!"

"So where's this restaurant you were all excited about, then?" Zack asked, resigned. That was one of her favorite things about Zack, besides his unceasing cheerfulness, his friendliness, and, well, basically everything about Zack was her favorite thing. But in this particular moment she especially appreciated his willingness to bend the rules when they were stupid anyway and they were out looking for a good time.

"Right this way."

She did direct them to a decent Wutaian place she'd discovered during that forgettable period of trying for SOLDIER, but insisted on walking around while they ate.

Pretty soon, they were completely lost.

"Maybe we should just turn around," Cloud said for the third time.

Eve was absolutely determined not to let her terrible navigation skills ruin this perfect opportunity. "I'm sure if we keep going we'll recognize something eventually."

"That's what you said five minutes ago."

"Well, it's still true. I—ah!"

"What? What happened?"

"Look!" She pointed.

"A steeple? So what?"

"Let's go there!"

"What? Why? That's not something I recognize."

"Well, _I_ recognize it."

"When were you in the Sector 7 slums?"

"It doesn't matter. _I'm_ going; you can stay if you want."

"…fine."

Eve practically skipped up to the church, pushing open the doors and just basking in the delicate scent of flowers for a moment. Now that she'd actually lived in Midgar for awhile, the beauty and rarity of Aerith's church really struck a chord with her.

"What is it? Oh, flowers!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Eve saw a girl kneeling by the flowers, mostly obscured by a pew. Time to give fate a helping hand. Timing herself carefully, she casually stuck out a foot and sent Zack sprawling to the floor, inches away from crushing the flowers.

"Oh my!" Aerith exclaimed.

"Mmph," Zack said.

Eve grinned.


End file.
